Today is the Feast of Saint Valentine and Valentine’s Day is a big thing back in the Philippines, second perhaps only to Christmas for people to give gifts and to eat out to celebrate. Indeed, Filipinos are a very loving people and I have always considered myself as a very romantic person. I love cheesy movies and novels. I love doing cheesy things for the people I love.
I guess the reason I am so devoted and committed to my faith in Christ is because he gave just one commandment to his followers: Love! It is easy for me to love, sometimes even to a fault. But love is everywhere: I see love in the joy and laughter in our family, in the sharing of even sad and bad times among us. I see love in our connectedness with friends of long and many years and even with time and distance keep us apart. I see God’s love for me in every sunrise and in nature around me. Oh, there are times I find it difficult to love as when I get hurt or feel betrayed. And I easily get hurt. But, as Sinatra would croon, still in all I’m happy because love has been good to me.
The joy and essence of love is in the giving. It is paradoxical. The more I take and keep things, and sometimes even people, for myself; the emptier I feel. It is when I give and give generously that I fell I have so much that I can give on giving even more. This is not the way of the world. The way of the world is about grabbing what I can for myself. Often, it is everyone for himself out there. Get what I can for myself before things run out. Lambs among wolves? Perhaps. But that is the way of love.
He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Luke 10:1-6