Love and Sorrow

February is the month of Love! Valentines went on sale the day after Christmas. Candy sales are booming and if you want to give your truelove a dozen roses, make it an early Valentine’s Day gift because the price will triple starting February eleventh. Romance, hearts, and flowers will be the theme of the day on February 14^th.

But that date also holds another special event, a day celebrated in the Church for over a thousand years. It is Ash Wednesday. It is a time of penance. A time of looking at our sin and not at our bouquets of roses. It is a night when the faithful will gather to confess and mourn their sins that sent Jesus to the cross to die for our forgiveness. It is the beginning of a period of self-examination that is designed to help us remold our life not just for forty days, but for life.

With that sorrow also comes a remembrance of a greater love than we can ever have for our sweethearts here on earth. It is time to remember the great love that God the Father had in sending His Son to die for us that we might live not just now, but forever. It is a time to remember our commitments to God that were made at our baptisms, our confirmations, and at other major moments in our lives. Have we kept the promises we made to our truest love, Jesus Christ? Have we strayed from our devotion of love and service to God while we are really trying to seek the things of earth? Ash Wednesday is to remind us to reorder our thinking and realize that the things of earth do not remain, but that our call to be faithful to the true Lover of Our Soul does remain.

Perhaps it is the most apt of all alignments to find Valentines Day on Ash Wednesday. It is time to be reconnected in true faith, love, and devotion to Him who loves us so. 

For quality inspirational, educational, and fictional Christian books visit www.davidccraig.net