Love
by Celene Melenciano

Good morning boys and girls Happy Sabbath. I hope you guys are having a good morning today. I hope you had a great week and that you’re looking forward to your story today.

Today’s story, I want to talk about something that’s coming up next week. People made almost a holiday, you know, every year in February, and I’m not talking about the Superbowl. I know you guys love that too. You like football. I know your parents do. But I’m talking about Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day, it’s a day for what? To celebrate love, right? It’s not just the love, you know, between a boyfriend and a girlfriend or parents and you know, it’s love between everybody and it’s friendship, this is a day we celebrate our friendship.

What do you usually do in school for Valentine’s Day? You give out Valentine’s Day cards, right? To all your classmates, maybe somebody brings in a box of chocolates to share or little heart shaped candies. Sometimes we’ll write up little cards, you know, send them out. Most of the adults will go ahead and give out flowers, right, a nice bouquet of flowers for you know, the person they like. We think about the little guy Cupid, right, that little angel looking guy with the little arrow in his hand that he’s shooting at people to fall in love. We try to think of different ways to celebrate love and friendship. For example, for Valentine’s Day, one year, my children made these, okay, and they put the picture on it. So I have these I received for Valentine’s Day that they gave me.

So Valentine’s Day is just a day to celebrate friendship, and love, and being happy that we have each other. But Valentine’s Day isn’t just one day out of the year. I know we made it one day of the year February 14, but it should be every day. Friendship and love should be celebrated every single day. You know, how can you think of how you can celebrate love with your friends, with your family, with your cousins, and you know, maybe even your own siblings, you can be friends with them, too. You have to be friends with them to get along. Right? Maybe you can reach out to them how? Pick up the phone, give them a call. Right? Talk to them. We love to do that when we get older talking on the phone with their friends. What about going out and playing a game? Maybe some balls, everybody together? You know, that’s one way to have fun to celebrate our friendship. Some of us lately have just been doing something like this and you have fun. Video games, right? You guys get online and you play video games with your friends with your cousins. You know, just a quick game of whatever it is. It is all celebrating our friendship and our relationship with each other. Why? Because we love each other.

You know, the Bible talks a lot about God’s love for us. But his love doesn’t expect us to give them flowers, or candies or cards. What he wants from us is our heart. Do we all have a heart? Yes, we do. So God wants us to love Him the way He loves us. The Bible tells us the God so loved the world that He gave His only Son Jesus to come and die for us because He loves us that much. You know, every time we think about Valentine’s Day, it shouldn’t just be about the cards and the flowers and the chocolates and the things you can get and things you’re going to give. It should be something that we think of every day, loving each other, having special friendships, having special relationship with their parents, with their siblings, with their cousins, just our neighbors and enjoying that because that’s what God is. God is love. Now, I hope this following week you guys have fun at school, doing your Valentine’s Day activities. And I hope that you let your parents and your friends and your family know how much you love them.

Let’s say a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much because you are love and because you showed us what love is all about. Thank you for caring for us, for guiding us and for providing for all our needs. We pray that you’d be with these kids for the rest of this week. Jesus name, amen.

We’ll see you next week.