Submitted by Pastor David Wynn, Tarkio Christian Church

This coming Friday we celebrate what many consider to be a Hallmark holiday – Valentine’s Day. But really they have it backwards. On Valentine’s Day we celebrate the joy of the soul in the love that we have for each other through our Savior. And I for one am thankful that Hallmark and other card companies give us the opportunity to celebrate these days through the gift of giving. Because, as the song says . . . “Love isn’t love until you give it away.”

Max Lucado tells us a very powerful story about two very lonely people . . . a little girl desperately seeking love and a little old man who gave up on love long ago.

“On a quiet city street in the city a little old man walked along, shuffling through the autumn afternoon, and the autumn leaves reminded him of other summers  come and gone . . . he had a long, lonely night ahead. Then, among the leaves near an orphan’s home, a piece of paper caught his eye,  and he stooped to pick it up with his trembling hands. As he read the childish writing the old man began to cry, because the words he read reminded him of the loneliness that burned inside of him every waking minute of his life. The note read, “Whoever finds this, I love you. Whoever finds this, I need you. I ain’t even got no one to talk to, so, whoever finds this, I love you!”

The old man’s eyes searched the windows of the orphan’s home, and before long came to rest upon the face of a child, her nose pressed up against the dirty window pane. And the old man knew he had found a friend at last. So he waved to her and smiled, and she waved back and smiled, and they knew that this winter they would be laughing at the rain. And you know what? They did spend that winter laughing at the rain, talking through the fence, and exchanging little gifts  they had made for each other. The old man would carve toys for the little girl and she, well, she would draw pictures for him of beautiful ladies  surrounded by green trees and sunshine. And they laughed. They laughed a lot.

But then, on the first day of June, the little girl ran to the fence to show the old man a picture she had drawn, but he wasn’t there. And somehow the little girl knew that he wasn’t coming back. So she went to her room, took a crayon and paper and wrote,“Whoever finds this, I love you. Whoever finds this, I need you. I ain’t even got no one to talk to, so, whoever finds this, I love you!”

I love this story because it so closely matches the words from Paul: “Love is patient, love is kind, love is always loyal and gives us hope. Love never fails.” The lonely old man and the lonely little girl are able to find hope by giving to one another the joy that is found only through love. All that winter they talked, they laughed, they exchanged gifts. They built a bridge over that canyon that had been formed in the middle of their hearts.

Speaking of canyons, has anyone here ever been to the most magnificent canyon in the world, the grandest of them all, found in the state of Arizona . . . the Grand Canyon? But did you know that deep down inside of this canyon, the deepest on the earth’s surface, there is virtually no life? As it is in the Grand Canyon, so it is often in our hearts. A huge canyon where love was once a huge mountain. A mountain that has been eroded away by the rivers of hatred, anger, jealousies, and bitterness, terrible destructive forces that so often take control of our lives, and they affect us whether we are little children, or those approaching our final days.

But we aren’t without hope, you know. For even as a lack of love can create a deep and lifeless canyon in our hearts, the presence of love, God’s greatest gift of all, can bridge it.

Love then is like a mountain that will never collapse, never fade, never end. Real love survives everything. The one characteristic Jesus said would identify His disciples was love. God only gives us just this one chance here on earth, you know.

A chance that says, “How would you react if someday you were walking along, and a piece of paper caught your eye that said, “Whoever finds this, I love you. Whoever finds this, I need you. I ain’t even got no one to talk to, so, whoever finds this, I love you!”

Happy Valentine’s Day!