A Valentine Benediction: The Love Older than Stars

It’s Valentine’s Day. The stores are full of hearts, candy, and flowers. Baby archers are hunting people. Love is in the air! Isn’t it exciting?

Or maybe we find it a little sad. Valentine’s Day may be a reminder of something we wish we had—maybe not now, but one day. And we wonder and maybe worry about whether love will find us.

Or maybe we feel cynical. All this lovey-dovey stuff is frivolous or over-commercialized. We’ve got more important things to think about!

Our excited, sad, and cynical hearts need a reminder: love is worth thinking about—because love is the most important thing. Why?

If we think of love as small, weak, and passing, we’re thinking about human love. That’s just a shadow of the real thing. The true love is older than stars and it is the reason for everything. Let’s hear John say it in the first chapter of his gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Here we see some important things about this Word: He is “with God” and is the creator. But where’s the love? John says this later, in v. 18:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

The ESV says, “at the Father’s side.” Many older translations like the KJV say, “in the bosom of the Father.” The NASB says, “in the arms of the Father.” I like the NRSV most, which says, “close to the Father’s heart.”

Friends, that is what we call a hug. When did that hug start? Jesus says to His Father in John 17:24, “you loved me before the foundation of the world.” This is the love older than stars, the love that made the world.

But what does this forever-hug, this love older than stars, have to do with us? What did the Word, the Son, do? Here’s John 1:14:

… the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Why did the Word, the Son, become a human like us? To call us into the forever-hug! John 1:12 says,

 …to all who … received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

Jesus, the only Son, wants us close to His Father’s heart too. He came for that. He prayed for that in John 17:24:

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 

Then He died for that. And He rose for that. And He sits now at the Father’s side, in the Father’s arms, close to the Father’s heart, awaiting our fully realized communion in Him, in the love older than stars.

This was originally addressed to the students and faculty at the Friday Benediction at Westminster School at Oak Mountain Upper School in Birmingham, AL.