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This week, make love a focus in both personal and public relationships

I've been thinking recently about themes shared by these three. On the surface, (1) Valentine's Day is more upbeat than both Lincoln's birthday (given the struggles of the Civil War and Lincoln's being assassinated) and Ash Wednesday (with its themes of sin, repentance, correction and mortality). Yet all three variously share the theme of love.
With "red hearts" on Valentine cards, roses, chocolates and "dinners out," Valentine's Day revolves around romantic love with teens and adults, and with friendships among pre-teens. While the origin of Valentine's Day is debated between historians who are more religiously oriented or more secularly oriented, Valentine's Day's undeniable focus is love -- whether more secular or more religious in consideration.
Love frequently focuses on individual relationships, whether with romance or friendship. Love, though, has at least two other dimensions: related to people generally and related to God. Here's where the general "love-focus" of Valentine's Day spreads to the neighboring calendar-date anniversary of Lincoln's birth and to this year's Ash Wednesday (with its rare occurrence on Feb. 14).
Perhaps no one was more committed with a love for the union of the United States than Abraham Lincoln; and Lincoln's love for the union of the several states extended to all the human beings within the union of the States comprising the Federal Republic. This commitment and love translated into the 16th president's public policy ethics -- opposing slavery and the divisions it perpetuated. A secessionist movement and Civil War developed in opposition to Lincoln's love-and-dignity-based public policy ethics. He expressed his deeply held values in his oratory, as in November 1863 on the field where the Battle of Gettysburg had taken place: "It is for us the living to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that they shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Then in 1865 -- only 42 days before his death from an assassin's bullet -- he said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Ash Wednesday is a Christian religious observance using palm ashes as a reminder of human beings' mortality, of our tendency to wander from God's love and faithful service and of God's love embodied in Jesus who takes shared life and death upon himself as a witness to God's ongoing faithfulness to all individuals. As one disciple of Jesus testified: "God is love," and "We love because God first loved us" (I John 4:16b,19).
This coming week and beyond, may transforming understandings of love develop in both our personal and our public relationships, always with love for all of God's people.

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