Today is Valentine’s Day.
My last date on Valentine’s Day was in fifth grade, when my dad took me out for breakfast before school and gave me a heart shaped balloon with a teddy bear and the words “I love you” on it. I still have that balloon.
Yes, it’s a made up holiday. Yes, it’s a chance to make money. Yes, I have rarely spent this day as much of our country does. But I don’t mind.
Sometimes it is evident, Lord, that the wandering and unfaithfulness and adultery of Israel all throughout the Old Testament is less about the general sin nature of man (though I know that is part of it) and more about the preserving and record of an example for us as generations to come – so we could look and see and realize how and who we are through a tangible example. No one else was ever going to serve as, and be written down as, this example, because no one else has had the words and knowledge of God describing their inner hearts in a way even they don’t know. We’re just not often that honest with ourselves, to see ourselves as the people of Israel are described, much less to preserve that portrayal of ourselves in historical form so that generations to come can learn and see themselves in us, and in our example. But we are Israel, or at least just like Israel, in modern day equivalents. I am like Israel.
how faint a whisper