Inspiration for the Everyday {February 2021}

Happy Valentine’s Day! Below are some thoughts and quotations that I gathered from my Commonplace Books, on the theme of love.

My prayer for you today is that you will learn to love others more deeply as you more fully comprehend the love God has for you. If you are a natural-born pleaser/achiever like me, it can often be difficult to realize and remember that God’s love for you is not based on any merit of your own. He loves you in spite of all your failures and sins. He loves you, and not because of anything you have done or anything you are currently doing. You cannot and you will not measure up. His love is undeserved, yes, a thousand times yes, and that is what makes God’s love toward us so exceedingly precious.

This truth has come home to me over the past few years, and it repeatedly brings me to tears, because it speaks to my soul.

“How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that He would give His only Son,
to make a wretch His treasure.”
-Stuart Townend

God’s love was expressed in a supreme Sacrifice. Wherever there is true love, there must be giving, and giving to the point of sacrifice. Love is not satisfied with giving trinkets; it must give at the cost of sacrifices; it must give blood, life, all.
-F.B. Meyer

If interruptions annoy me,
and private cares make me impatient;
if I shadow the souls about me because I myself am shadowed,
then I know nothing of Calvary Love.
-Amy Carmichael

I give You all I am, the old things and the new.
I want my life to say the words, “Jesus, I love You.”
-Scott W. Brown & Phil Naish

Said of the early Christians: “Oh, how they love.”

You are so important. You are the love of someone’s life, you are that cherished child, you are the neighbor who steps in and means the world to a complete stranger, you are the kind word to someone who needs it like air.
You don’t see it yet.
But you are.
-Lin-Manuel Miranda

Grief can only come when love preceded it.
-from the funeral of a dear friend

Our family is a circle of strength and love. With every birth and every union, the circle grows.
Every joy shared adds more love.
Every crisis faced together makes the circle stronger.
-Anonymous