The Month of Love

How can it be February, already? And the middle of February, at that.

Here in Kentucky, where I live, spring is slowly trying to overtake winter, for which I am thankful. Being born and having spent my childhood in Africa, I must admit, I don't really like winter time and the cold temps it brings, though I will be the first to admit that snow is pretty as long as I don't have to go out in it. But I am always happy to see spring on its way!

February is the month of love, especially the love of a man and woman who have found each other and entered a committed relationship. I am blessed with this kind of love and this Valentines, I will send some special "I love you's" to the man I love. He has already gotten me a gift--it came in the mail a few days ago.

But during this month of love it's good to remember the greatest love of all, which is, of course, God's love. Here are a few Bible verses that tell us about God's love:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him could be saved." John 3:16-17

"Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God but anyone who does not love is not of God, for God is love." 1 John 4:7

And my personal favorite:
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

These are just three of the many, many passages in the Bible that tell us of God's great love. I challenge you to find more!

The Month of Love

The People Who Love

February is the month of love. With Valentine’s Day coming in the middle of the month, our thoughts turn to the topic of love, especially the love between a man and a woman. But there are other types of love—the love God has for His creation, and the brotherly type of love a person has for another person.

My sister told me a story once that came out of our time as a family in Nigeria when my parents were missionaries. Our dad used to sometimes travel to rural areas to hold day clinics. We lived among the Yoruba people. They speak a beautiful sing-song tonal language.

They also play a lot of drums and have a certain drum they call the talking drum. This drum was used in days gone by to beat out messages and send them to neighboring villages. Since the language is tonal, the various tones of the drum could be understood as words by the people. As children we grew used to hearing the drums and could even understand some of the words and messages beat from them. 

One day, my older sister, Alisa, accompanied our dad on one of his nearby village clinics. She rode on the back of his bicycle as he peddled them to the village. As they approached she heard the usual drums but as she listened, she realized it was not the usual message she was accustomed to.

Usually the drums beat out Oyinbo, which meant peeled one. This was the Yoruba word for white people and it was the drums letting the villagers know the missionaries were visiting. But that day, the sound was different.

Alisa asked our dad, who was fluent in the Yoruba language, why the drums were different, what were they saying? He listened a minute and then told her the drums were saying “The people who love are coming.” He explained that this would be understood by the villagers as the medical people were coming. It was their way of letting the people know a clinic would be held. Health professionals were seen as people who cared about the well-being of the villagers. They were the people who loved.

Awudi and the Unspoken Language

This post was written by my sister, Alisa Smith. It is about a person who was so special to our family. In a couple more weeks, I will post a story about Awudi that I wrote.     

Awudi was a member of my family from the time I have any memory of such a thing as family. She was as much a part of my family as my brothers or sisters and a far greater part of my family than the grandparents or relatives that lived across the ocean in a land that I had never seen. She took care of me and my siblings while my parents saw patients at the hospital or the Leprosy Settlement, Blind Center, and Kersey Children’s’ Home, a home for motherless babies whose population grew the longer the Biafrian War raged. It was as if I had two mothers a white one and a black one. Two mothers who loved me and two mothers that I loved.

Awudi was there when my sister tried at age three to dive head first into the bath tub from on top of the toilet and split her head open. It was Awudi who wrapped a towel around her bleeding head and made sure my mother did not run out of the house naked in her efforts to get Marianne to the hospital. After my mother and Marianne left, it was Awudi who gathered me and my frightened siblings close in her arms and sang softly in a language we did not understand, stopping only to kiss us on our heads. The reason we did not understand her song was that she spoke neither English nor Yoruba. She spoke Ingeni, the language of her tribe in Igbo land near the Niger River Delta.

When I grew older I was told Awudi’s story. How she once had four children of her own and how her husband beat her repeatedly. How she knew that her children were considered the property of her husband and that if she left him she would lose them. So she endured the beatings for many years, until one day her husband nearly killed her. She became convinced that he would eventually beat her to death and so she left, her heart crying for her lost children. I believe that is why she loved us so much. We became her children and we returned her love.

 

It is strange for me to realize how little actual English she spoke to us. She could say No of course, and Yes.  But the rest of the time she showed us what she needed us to do, to hurry, to bathe, to dress, or to pick up our plates. And of course no words were needed when we skinned our knees or cut our feet, only her arms to wipe away the tears. She had comforting down to an art. There was no one else we would rather snuggle into when we were frightened or whose shoulders we would rather lay our heads on when we were sleepy.

I have a vivid memory of watching her get dressed once when I was eleven years old. We were traveling on a trip to see another missionary family and I had left my room to go to where Awudi was sleeping. I am not sure why I went there, maybe because I was in a strange place and she was comfort personified. It was early and she was humming softly and putting powder on her arms and face. She laughingly dabbed a little bit on my face and I laughed. We did not speak a word. I just sat there feeling happy watching the sun streaming in through the window while Awudi softly sang. I realize now that we were speaking our very own language, a language that does not need words…..the language of love.   

 

Valentines

God’s Love

This was posted by my friend and fellow writer, Linda Jeffrey last year in her blog:  www.thegriefexperience.wordpress.com 

A hundred years ago in an old fashioned camp meeting, the evangelist told about a man who died alone in an insane asylum. Scrawled on the wall of his room were these words,

 

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade.

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

A song writer in attendance that day wrote down the words and added other verses, but none so powerful as this metaphor. I cannot tell you about God’s love and I will never be as eloquent as the anonymous sufferer who wrote those words on his wall, but I know the love of God was more than words in a Bible for him. Some day he will tell us how the love of God carried him home.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How marvelous and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints' and angels' song.

 

 

Merry Christmas

Then Came Love

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NASB)

What does love look like? If someone asked you to draw a picture of love what would you draw? Ask a child that question and he might draw a heart, but does that really convey the essence of love? The Bible tells us love looks like a baby in a manger - like approximately seven pounds of helpless flesh sleeping contentedly or perhaps crying in hunger just like any other baby. But this baby was not in a warm, clean crib in a brightly painted room; no this baby was in a stable full of dirty animals because there was no bed for Him among humans.

Love also looks like a young man in the prime of life bleeding and dying on a cross. It looks like this man willingly giving up His life so that others might gain theirs. Love looks like the everlasting God in all His glory……wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

Sing sweet and low your lullaby till angels say “Amen.”
A mother tonight is rocking
a cradle in Bethlehem.
As wisemen follow in the dark, a star that beckons them.
A mother tonight is rocking
a cradle in Bethlehem.
(Lyrics from a song on the late Nat King Cole’s Christmas album.)