As we celebrate Valentine's Day the emphasis is on romantic love, a love between a couple. And the Bible has much to say about this. But the Bible also has a lot to say about love in general, not least Jesus’s command to “love one another”.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus was answering the question of who we should love - in short the answer is anyone and everyone! But in this story I believe that we can also learn how to demonstrate love to other people. The Good Samaritan stopped by the man who had been beaten and did three things: he bandaged his wounds, he put him on his donkey, and he paid for him to stay and recover at a nearby inn.
From this I believe that we learn that loving other people often involves a level of practical help, a willingness to journey with other people, and an acceptance of the fact that loving others can be costly for ourselves. Some of that will come easily to us, some of that will be difficult and unappealing. But we don't love in a vacuum; we love because God first loved us. My prayer this Valentine's Day is that love would indeed be in the air, enabling us to love in ways that are difficult as well as easy because we know that we are loved children of God.
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