By Chris Surber
Columnist

I was driving in my car recently, listening to an “oldies” station. After my initial shock at hearing a song from my childhood played on a classic hits station, I was swept away by the sounds of that timeless love song.

Who can keep from singing along with Stevie’s smooth voice as he sings “I just called to say I love you, I just called to say how much I care, I just called to say I love you, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

This was a few days before Valentine’s Day, and I almost stopped what I doing to rush right to the jewelry store to replace the $5 gift I had purchased for my wife with one that I couldn’t afford. But hey, even Stevie can’t always pull that hard on these rusty heart strings!

After the song was over, I went back to my daily business, almost forgetting entirely that Valentine’s Day was just around the corner.

Human love is pretty simple, isn’t it? Human love is fickle. It’s fleeting. If my wife complains too much about the many legitimate reasons I give her to complain, I may not feel as much in love that day. On the other hand, if she ignores them and showers me with kindness, then I am likely to feel greatly more affectionate towards her. Human love, even the most sincere human love, always retains at least an element of selfishness in it.

It’s not so with God. God loves us too much to allow our fickle nature to affect His love for us. His love is too complete to fade one iota after the song ends. He composes the love song that is sung through the pages of Scripture, through which He calls us to Himself, in love for His creation.

He could not possibly love you more and would never love you less than He already does because His love for us isn’t conditioned upon anything that we do, have done or will do.

Thanks to football fans who paint it on their chests and, more recently, thanks to one football player, John 3:16 is likely the most well known passage in the Bible.

It reads: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (ESV)

The central theme of the Bible is that God loves us enough to have called to us through its pages just to tell us how much He loves us.

Valentine’s Day was great, but every day is a day to remember that we are loved by the very one who made us to enjoy Him and know Him completely.