Last week, on Valentine’s Day, most of us were forced to think about love one way or another. The advertisements and sitcoms were hard to miss as everything around us turned red. Few western traditions have crossed other cultural divides around the world like Valentine’s Day. From Hong Kong to Cape Town, Buenos Aires to Cairo, the world celebrates love with the exchange of cards, flowers and candy on February 14th. Much is also said about love in movies, songs and magazine articles with no end in sight.

Unfortunately there is also an unusual focus on romantic love, emotions and passion on this so called day of love. The emotion of love is a phenomenon that we as human beings crave, sometimes at any cost. God, however, did not create us with the emotion of love as an end but as a means to an end. The Bible teaches that we are to love as God loved us and our love should always be displayed by our actions.

I Jn 3:17-18 (NLT)
17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?
18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.

On the other hand, there has also been an attempt to downplay or minimize the emotion of love and focus mainly on love actions. As commendable as this maybe, I believe the ideal is to have compassion and act from it. Thus, the feeling acts as a catalyst to stir us into the action(s) of love. In my own life, I have found it easier to act in love when I am full of feelings of love as opposed to those of resentment and animosity.

1 Cor 13:3 (NLT)
If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Many times Jesus acted in love after being moved with compassion. He raised a widow’s son from the dead after being moved with compassion concerning her plight. He wept when he went to raise Lazarus from the dead. Matt 14:14 tells us that when he saw the crowd of people, he had compassion on them and healed all those who were ill among them.
Let us endeavor, therefore, to fan our passion and show our first love through deeds of love before God and man. Let us not shut our bowels of compassion toward our neighbor, but like the Good Samaritan, respond with action to the emotions of love within.