Sitting in the comfort of my home while I fill out the 2011 census, I’m feeling very grateful not to have lived two thousand years ago and conscious that the record of my details will have a less dramatic effect on world history than another entry made then. Luke’s Gospel tells us that when Mary was pregnant with the baby Jesus, Caesar Augustus decided to take a census of the ‘entire Roman world’. Every citizen had to return to their hometown, which for Mary and Joseph meant a 90 mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Taking the best part of week, the journey would have been extremely uncomfortable for Mary, bouncing up and down on the back of a donkey.

But God was using the circumstances of history to put the right people in the right place at the right time. Hundreds of years earlier the prophet Micah had said, ‘But you, Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel’. To fulfil the prophecy Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, had to be born in Bethlehem and it was the census that got him there in time.

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The UK has recently passed the grim milestone of 125,000 deaths from Covid19. Every life lost was sacred and precious and each passing has been mourned. But during the same period approximately twice that number of babies have been lost through abortion. Every one of those lives was sacred and precious and known to God. The Bible reminds us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing about it, much less a life created in His own image.

In Psalm 139 David writes, ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.’

As a society we have deliberately cast this knowledge aside but to our own detriment. We have forgotten that we are creatures, and that life is sacred. That’s why Black Lives Matter. That’s why women’s lives matter and should be treated with honour and respect. That’s why all lives matter.

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On 13th October 2020 Dr Fabio Grandas was flying from St Marta to Guaymaral airport in Colombia. On board the light aircraft were his wife Mayerly, their baby Martin and his nanny. Tragically the aircraft plunged out of the sky and into the ground. Rescue workers were quickly on the scene and to their dismay found that the adults had perished in the crash. But remarkably baby Martin was alive, cradled in his mother’s arms. She had used her own body to bear the consequence of the fall and so saved his life. Such is the instinctive nature of a mother’s love.

This love is a reflection of the image of God in which we are made. In Psalm 139 the writer speaks of God knitting us together in our mother’s wombs and praises God saying, ‘You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Where can I go from your Spirit?’

It is this same love that we see pre-eminently on the cross as Jesus takes in his own body the consequences of our fall from grace and so saves our lives.

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This week nineteen-year-old ‘Angel’ was shot dead on the streets of Mandalay. She had been protesting against the military coup that has once again plunged the nation of Myanmar into crisis. The T-shirt she had chosen to wear that day boldly declared ‘Everything will be OK’. Tragically for her everything was not OK. But her T-shirt was an expression of a wider hope for the future of her country and an eventual move to full democracy. We must hope and pray that she did not die in vain.

The struggle for freedom is played out all in numerous nations around the world and has ever been so. Two thousand years ago it was the turn of the Jews longing to overturn the tyranny and oppression of Rome. A motley crew of misfits threw their lot in with a carpenter-turned-preacher from Nazareth who promised them that everything would be OK. His cause seemed hopeless but those who opposed him reckoned without his divine identity and purpose. In this world alone we may never be certain that ‘everything will be OK’. But the promise of Jesus is that for those who trust in him one day and for eternity it will be.

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First there was Mr Potato Head. Then Mrs Potato Head. And now gender-neutral Potato Head! It’s a sure sign that we no longer think of our identity as something that we are born with. Rather we see ourselves as a blank canvas upon which we can create whoever we feel ourselves to be. But perhaps in this rush to self-identify we’ve missed something. 

When Jesus was baptised God spoke to him from heaven and said, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”  Right from the outset Jesus had the assurance of knowing who he was based on the love and approval of his father. Everything he did flowed from this sense of identity and security in God.

The Bible says that we too are made in the image of God. We are created to derive our identity and security from our relationship with him. It may seem like a good idea to self-identify, but if we do so we run the risk of never knowing who we were truly meant to be. It’s the difference between having a go at painting the Mona Lisa ourselves or getting Leonard di Vinci in to do it for us!

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Photo credit: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire URN:25326058

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The story is told of a father who gave his daughter an old car as a graduation present. Before handing over the keys for good he instructed her to have it valued at a used car dealership, a pawn shop and a classic car club. The used car dealership offered her £1,000 because it looked very tired. The pawn shop offered just £100 because of its age. But the classic car club offered her £100,000 because it was a very rare and iconic car, much in demand. She returned home and told her father about the different valuations. He told her, ‘the right place values you in the right way. You are about to start out in life. If you are not valued, don’t get angry, just realise that you are in the wrong place. Never stay in a place where no one sees your value.’

In life we are all trying to discover our true worth and we often do so by seeking approval from those around us. Mostly other people will value us like the used car dealership or the pawn shop. Only God who ‘knit us together in our mother’s womb’ sees our true value and thinks we’re priceless.

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In an iconic scene from the film, Crocodile Dundee is walking through New York city with his girlfriend. Suddenly a mugger steps out with a knife demanding his wallet. Dundee looks at the knife and says, ‘that’s not a knife.’ Then he pulls out an enormous Bowie knife and says, ‘that’s a knife!’ The mugger realises how puny his knife is in comparison with Dundee’s and runs off.

It just goes to show that something may seem impressive only until compared with something bigger. It’s this idea that lies at the heart of one of Jesus’ most famous stories. A religious zealot, a Pharisee, goes up the Temple to pray with a tax-collector, a sinner. The Pharisee looks down on the sinner and boasts about how righteous he is by comparison. The sinner, on the other hand, realises he must compare himself to the holy God he has come to worship and asks for mercy.

We do a similar thing when we compare ourselves to others and decide we’re better than they are. God looks on our self-righteousness and says, ‘that’s not righteousness’. Then he shows us his perfect Son Jesus and says, ‘that’s righteousness!’ 

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Here’s a thought for those of you who celebrated Valentine’s Day with a loved one – do the cards and gifts you received prove that you are loved? The short answer is no they don’t, because love is impossible to prove. All the cards, flowers and chocolates in the world can only ever provide you with evidence. So, do you have enough evidence to convince you beyond reasonable doubt that you are loved?

In a similar way I’m sometimes challenged to prove that God exists, and the honest answer is I can’t. No one can. The existence of God isn’t a mathematical problem to be solved but a relationship to be experienced. The question is not can I prove God’s existence, but rather can I point to evidence that puts it beyond reasonable doubt? 

The Bible says that God is love and that the greatest gift he gave to the world was his son Jesus Christ. Jesus in turn demonstrated God’s love through the things he said and did and most significantly through his death and resurrection. The evidence is there to show God’s existence and his love, but, like our Valentines, we must decide whether or not we are convinced.

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A survey of 18 – 24-year olds revealed that a quarter thought marriage should be a temporary arrangement much like a mobile phone contract. It shows that like so many ‘traditional values’ the idea of lifelong commitment is increasingly seen as unrealistic. Our consumer culture which encourages us to regularly upgrade to the latest model has finally affected the way we view relationships.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Our society has lost sight of the concept of a loving, faithful God. So, it’s no wonder that we’ve lost confidence in our own ability to sustain lifelong relationships.

The problem is, however, that while our expectation of lifelong fidelity may have fallen, it’s the one thing we truly long for. Our hearts are never more fulfilled than when we know that we are truly loved, and never more broken than when that love is betrayed.

Instead of abandoning the idea of lifelong commitment we need to rediscover the God of the Bible whose love for us for everlasting and inexhaustible. Once we’ve done that, we may also rediscover our own ability to love for a lifetime.

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Captivated by the personality of a lady he knew only from the comments she had written in the margin of a book, John Blanchard tracked her down and asked to meet. But before they could do so he was sent off to war. For twelve months they wrote to each other, but she refused to send a photo. Finally, they arranged to meet at Grand Central Station in New York. He would recognise her because she would be carrying a red rose. When John saw the rose being worn by an older lady with grey hair, he introduced himself and said, ‘I’m so glad to meet you. May I take you out for dinner.’ Somewhat perplexed she explained that the rose had been given her by the beautiful young woman who had walked past John as he entered the station. She was waiting for him in the restaurant across the road. She knew that they had made a heart connection through their letter writing. But she wanted to know whether he cared what she looked like. He had passed her test.

This Valentine’s Day may we resist the shallow superficiality of our culture’s surgically enhanced view of beauty, and instead fall in love with a beautiful heart.

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