To fall in love can be easy, but truly loving someone is not. Not if you give your whole self to that goal, to devote yourself to another person or persons. An act of love is a sacrifice and within this body of flesh, sacrifices don't come easy. They require not holding onto life as you've known it to that point. Yes, in a good relationship you are still who you are, but what's required of you will not be centered on who you are but on who the object of your love is. Not to enable but to enhance. And inevitably if you're enhancing who they are, that love will be returned.
The entangled hearts in the image represent the locked position of two lives given to one another, inseparable, entwined.
Valentine's Day is supposed to be a celebration of ethereal love and romantic love. Like Christmas, it's been consumed with a commercially acceptable alternative of chocolates, roses, negligees, sexual romps, etcetera. That's part of what makes loving someone difficult. Will I measure up to expectations? Will he or she? The world has set impossible parameters for measuring love - most all of them wrong, invalid, or unnecessary.
Perfect love (and the only One who's achieved that is Jesus who sacrificed His life for you and me) is virtually unattainable, but it's a noble goal. And the only way to even attempt loving someone well is to know the God of the Universe who explains what it entails. Let me tell you it's not for the faint of heart. It's hard, it's work, and it "don't come easy." Why? Because we're selfish souls in our flesh. We want what we want when we want it, and we don't really like it when anyone gets in the way of that.
On this Valentine's Day I wish you love, the kind that God gives, Jesus demonstrates, and the Holy Spirit enhances. That kind of love for another is the real love and the only one worth experiencing.
Father, thank you for your immeasurable love, the beauty of love, the ones I love. You've given me love I've never deserved. Never can thank you enough. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.