Reflection for Sunday 14 Feb 2021

Good morning, and may I wish you a Happy Valentine’s day!

I wonder if you will receive had any messages of love today?

I can remember when I was around the ages of 11-14 waking up each Valentine’s day with a real sense of hope and expectation, wondering if this would be the year when I would receive a card from an unknown admirer. My hopes would slowly diminish as the day wore on............nothing with the first post, nothing with the second, and no hand delivered messages of love.

In later years, not wishing my own daughters to have that disappointment, I would buy cards for them and post them through the letterbox. I also was the “postie” for them, sneaking round undercover to post “anonymous” cards to boys they wanted to show admiration to. Thank goodness I was never discovered!!

Each year on Valentine ’s Day I ponder these actions, thinking about the reason it felt so important to receive and give messages of love and admiration.

I was chatting to someone the other day and they were commenting on how we all long for companionship, some other to whom we feel special, someone to laugh with, to talk things over with, to share highs and lows, to care for and to receive care from, someone whom we feel at home with.

I received a CD the other day, ( Alan Jackson, Precious Memories), which contains a selection of old hymns and songs which I’ve been listening to in the early mornings.

One has struck me as pertinent on this Valentine’s day.

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me;

See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home, You who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home!

Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised, promised for you and for me!

Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me.”

Come home, come home, You who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home!”

What better message for us to hear on this the Lord’s Day.

St Paul writes these words.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Jesus Christ, shows true love that satisfies our deepest longings, is calling softly and tenderly to you and to me.