God’s gift of love

Pastor Matt Ewart

Valentine’s Day is about giving gifts to people you love. Picking a gift can be difficult because a gift communicates what you think of someone. Perhaps there was a time when someone gave you a gift that left you shocked (good or bad) because of what it communicated.

We naturally apply this concept to God. You can look at everything that happens in your life as a gift from him. But some days you wonder what these “gifts” communicate. “Why did he allow this bad thing to happen?” “Why is he not giving me the good things I want? Does he really know me? value me? love me?”

When King David looked back at the life he had been given, he saw so much evidence of God’s love for him that he put it into these terms: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Psalm 103:11).

And before you can wonder how David reached that conclusion, he points to the reason for it: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (verse 12).

You won’t always understand why things happen to you or to others you love. But especially on Valentine’s Day as people exchange gifts that communicate something, pause for a moment to reflect on the message God communicated when he gave his one and only Son for you.

Devotion used by permission of Time of Grace®. For more information, visit timeofgrace.org