One day, in the month of February several years ago, as I went about my daily routine, the words to a popular love song of the time kept running through my head. Even as I went to bed, closing my eyes, attempting to sleep, the words grew stronger in me along with a deep emotion of the reality of their meaning.
“…Look into your heart, you will find there's nothing there to hide. Take me as I am, take my life, I would give it all, I would sacrifice. Don't tell me it's not worth fighting for. I can't help it, there's nothing I want more. You know it's true, everything I do, I do it for you.”[@more@]
An overwhelming sense of prayer came over me and as I prayed, with this song filling the background of my mind, it was as if God spoke to me and said, “This is the kind of love I have for you! This is the kind of love I have for each person. If fact, I did give my life for you!”
The strength of the moment was so that I could no longer stay in bed. I got up and went into the living room to sit on the sofa and pray. Before sitting down, I felt inclined to pick up my Bible, some paper and a pencil and sit them beside me. I continued praying, overwhelmed with the reality of the sacrifice that Jesus gave for each of us. And that the sacrifice of Himself came from the deepest, truest, most reality of love!
Eventually, within that same awareness the desire of my prayers became not only that we all would understand and experience that love, but that I, myself, could be able to have and express that same love from God. I started writing down the words of my prayer. It became my prayer to God of the kind of love I wanted to return to Him, because of the love that He gave unconditionally to me. The words just came, a sentence at a time as I wrote them down. It was as if it were a new beginning of the year for me, so I called it “A Beginning Prayer”. Then it was like God spoke and said, “Call it A Valentine Prayer”. After all, any expression of love and new beginnings come about only by the gift of His great love, given freely, to each of us.
Read the poem “A Valentine Prayer” on the page “The Poet”. And John 3:16.
[1] EVERYTHING I DO, I DO IT FOR YOU, Bryan Adams.
Vickie Hieb, Texas, USA
