The Day After Valentine's
Tuesday was Valentine's Day - how was yours?
Whether you had a good, great, or unimpressive day may not really matter to you. But for some people, that Valentine's Day experience can make or break a relationship, even sink a marriage.
Sound implausible? Sharon Jayson's article in USA Today covers the rise of websites which specialize in connecting individuals who are not content with their current marriages. By all accounts business is good in this sector, and even better the day after Valentine's Day. It seems that many people have high hopes for their Valentine's Day, thinking it will bring some life back into their marriages. But when the events of the day don't meet expectations, they look elsewhere.
Of course that sort of dependence on a single day to bring value to a marriage sounds ludicrious.There is a sense, however, in which we as a society are setting ourselves up for this kind of disillusionment. Think of the movies, TV shows, and books we read or watch. How many of them, if they end happily, end in a relationship? If not all, then most. After all, the phrase is "and they lived happily ever after" for a reason.
Is that a problem? As Christians we see in the Bible that God himself said it was "not good" for man to be alone. Human beings were created as social creatures at the outset, and made to live in relationship to each other, in families, and communities. So we can recognize that if a human's story were to have a "happy ending" in this life, he or she would have family, friends, and community at the end of it.
The problem is that we take this good thing and make it the highest good. Then we crystalize human relationships into one poignant ideal - the "soulmates" who complete each other to such a degree that they never need anyone or anything else to be happy.
And that is a problem. Adam and Eve were created by God for each other, truly a match made in heaven. And yet Adam and Eve were only truly happy when living in perfect fellowship with their Creator. The Bible tells us that they walked with God daily in his garden, over which, they were the caretakers. And the greatest punishment inflicted on both Adam and Eve after they disbelieved God's words and disobeyed him, was to be removed from his direct fellowship.
They were kicked out of God's garden. God wasn't treating them like friends any more. They felt more like enemies.
Since then we've been following in their footsteps by trying to fill the massive gap in our hearts and minds with something, anything at all, except God. And no human relationship can fill up the space left behind when our relationship with God was broken. That's why we invent ideal relationships and ideal people who we like to believe can make us feel alright. That's why when those people finally disappoint us, we feel the need to move on to something better. We end up always searching, never finding what we need.
God's plan included, and still includes much more for us. He became human himself, and lived among us. He was killed and then he came back to life. The Bible teaches that all of this was so that his death would cover our sins, and that his perfectly obedient life could be applied to our account before God. That's who the historical figure Jesus Christ claimed to be, and that's who he actually was.
He restored our standing before God. He did what Adam failed to do, and because of his own resurrection from the dead, you and I have true hope for life after death. If you believe him then you are united with Jesus before God and your hope will not disappoint you.
Jesus brought us back to himself, our true "highest good", and he invites anyone who will hear him to repent and turn to him. Let's stop trying to fill our lives with God-substitutes, and turn back to our Creator and Savior. Maybe we need a day like Valentine's Day to remind us.