BONUS: Happy Valentine’s Day! Seek & find Love in all the right places!

BONUS: Seek & find Love in all the right places for your happiest Valentine’s Day yet!

Shared on 2/13/2021 by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, Met Founder/Editor

It’s never too early or too late to look for Love in all the right places! Better than getting candy and roses (that are all-too-soon gone) is a Valentine‘s Day treasure hunt in which you’ll always find the true “Love divine (that) for ever waits to bless!” (CS Hymnal #270) Finding lasting Love is accomplished with carefree ease, when you look for and expect to find it in all the right places—instead of “in all the wrong places.” Have fun seeking and finding true Love in the amazing “Angel Love Songs” being sung at this very moment to you and AS YOU!

How about this for unconditional Love: “And we know that ALL things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) Included in these “ALL things” are seemingly ugly things. “Grace makes beauty out of ugly things” according to a song by U2 called “Grace.” (CedarS one-word 2021 theme.) To connect this lyrical line back to Paul’s assurance to the Romans, this all-beautifying quality of grace springs naturally from “them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Rom. 8:28 When you feel anew that your calling and purpose is “to impart truth, health and happiness,” you’ve found the beauty of true Love in all the right places, and your life will sing with the angelic joy of knowing and sharing your “reason for existing.” My. 165

God’s love for YOU will fill every seeming vacuum with neighborly and divine Love!
What fun to see that our inherited mindset to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18) is one of divine Love’s directives from the OLD testament, given to us by the same authors who wrote Genesis 1. Jesus expanded on this heritage; so did Mary Baker Eddy; and, so must we. Next time a lack of love surfaces and you hear or feel that this or that “really sucks,” remember that “this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love.” (S&H 266:9, underline added)

God’s love for YOU will make you feel at home and worry-free in your mansion of Love!
Here’s a little different take on the familiar passage from I John 4:16 “We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God. When we take up personal residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry…” (a paraphrase from The Message, The New Testament in Contemporary Language, by Eugene H. Peterson)

God’s love for YOU uplifts and rewards your humble foot-washing and service!
No test can prove our discipleship or show our gratitude more than our humbly seeking out ways to selflessly serve in daily good deeds. By washing his disciples’ feet and bidding us to do the same, Jesus set both an easy and hard standard for us to live up to daily. His meekness turned the world’s measure of success upside down. The Way-shower showed that we are not here to be served and to be loved, but rather to serve and to love! Only by obeying this new commandment to “love one another; as I have loved you” can we truly be known as Christians. Then, instead of coming into a room with the arrogant attitude of “Well, here I am,” we’ll come in radiating the Christ love of “Ah, there you are!”

God’s love for YOU brings forgiveness, healing – “a sweet and certain sense that God is Love”!
God’s inextricably connected gifts of the graces of forgiveness and healing have been irrevocably granted to you! Forgiveness and perfect soundness were graciously given to the man whose friends loved him enough, and trusted the certainty of the Christ-cure enough, to carry him and his couch up to a rooftop and tear it open so they could lower him down for Jesus to cure. (Mark 2:1-12) Try to picture this scene and the love and effort that it took! And, rejoice in and duplicate the love, effort and faith it represents! You too are sure to rejoice “in the proof of healing, — in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love.” S&H 569:13

God’s love for YOU renews joy & lets you see that “… I make all things new!” (Rev. 21:5)
Far from being “same old, same old,” the love of Christ and the daily service it demands bring newness and fresh joy to all. “If any man be in Christ, . . . behold, ALL things are become new.” (II Cor. 5:17) God’s Love is “the real deal” and will make us want to sing (with Freddie) this Love song from “My Fair Lady”: “I have often walked down this street before, but the pavement’s always stayed beneath my feet before. All at once am I seven stories high, knowing I’m on the street where you live.” The street where divine Love lives may not always be “Easy Street,” and is certainly not Bourbon Street, where Mardi Gras revelers seek all-too-“easy”, temporary highs by setting their affections on things of the earth. With no crash landings, lasting highs (that are “seven-stories high” – or 7-synonyms high) come only when you “set your affections on things above.” (Col. 3:2)

May you rejoice in the pure pleasure of “that happy day, when man shall recognize the Science of Christ and love his neighbor as himself” (S&H 55:17) and feel the peace, newness and joy of “that overpowering feeling that any second you (your true Love) may suddenly appear!” (from “On the Street Where You Live” in “My Fair Lady”) The true you, who has taken up residence in God’s reflected Love, is radiantly happy, joyously receptive, tenderly embraced, and dearly loved!

Revised (and re-sung) with Love for YOU from Happy Valentine messages past,
Warren (on behalf of CedarS Team

PS#1— Know that “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would surely be on it!”