“I love you.
Happy Valentine’s Day
My Beloved,”
GOD
“Happy Valentine’s,” said the small Hallmark card I found in my mail box at my first American undergraduate college.
Valentine? I had no idea who was Valentine.
Why would my dear Ghanaian mentor and friend Kawbena, and his American girlfriend put a card in my mail box wishing me happiness in a day named after a guy called Valentine, I wondered.
“It’s an American thing about showing love to others,” explained my new-found friend Kawbena as he saw my puzzled look. The good man who came to America years before me, and his girlfriend, knew how it felt to be alone without family members and friends. Their Valentine’s card reminded me of my mom and dad’s love from miles and miles away across the ocean.
Many years later, the seeds of love planted in my life by Kawbena and his Christian friends led me into a source of love even greater than my parent’s love;
God’s Perfect Love.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has 
to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18 (NIV)
I will never forget the sudden, relentless fears that gripped the heart of my macho, and self-confident patient. A series of totally unexpected brushes with the law subjected him to legal punishments that agitated his sense of security and blanketed his life with paralyzing fears.
He learnt the hard way that laws are supposed to scare you from breaking them and will quickly bring terror and fear to your life if you ever break them.
Think about the last time lights and police sirens wailed behind your car as you sped up above the speed limit. Where you a little apprehensive, afraid, panicky?
Friend, we obey the law because we fear the punishing consequences of breaking it.
But God knows that it’s not our fear of punishment for breaking His perfect law that would make us love and obey Him. He’s fully in our pursuit to love us and not to punish us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)
I pray that not just in Valentines’ Day but in all the days of our lives we’ll find God’s perfect love that’s freely offered to all. God’s love shows us what it means to be truly and genuinely loved.
Love that liberates us from fears
Love that’s genuine and real in a world where it’s often just a word said from the mouth but not the heart.
Love that brings us acceptance, value and forgiveness
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Friend, is that the kind of love you’re giving and experiencing: God’s kind of love.
“Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you,” God.
Adel G Hanna, MD
Author:
Soldier to Soldier; Heart to Heart
A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp