God is Love

I love the idea of Valentines Day and many of the lovely and cutesy things to be done with it. I've always celebrated something or other about it. But the past couple of years I've had a strong desire to make this day into something significant, something real and meaningful. Recently I have had some devastating personal issues that have left me dried up and angry and feeling pretty much everything but love. Thankfully a friend shared some links with me the other day and they were just what I needed; I have felt invigorated and inspired to deeply focus on the topic of love with my children in February. 

Over the next two to four weeks we will be doing a daily devotional unit on love. I will utilize and/or adapt several ideas from Kim Sorgium's "Ultimate Scripture Valentine List" as well as come up with a few things of my own. The backbone of our focus, at least to start with, is  "14 Days of God's Love" Valentine Scripture Countdown.

We began today by singing the hymn "God is Love".

We read Moses 6:63 and Doctrine & Covenants 59:18 and discussed how all of God's creations are for the benefit and joy of man because He loves us and wants us to be happy and the more we observe and learn the more we see that all things bear witness of Him.

Today's theme was GOD'S LOVE IS PERFECT, with the scripture reference of 1 John 4:18. The thing is, though, that all of chapter 4 in 1 John is GOLD and so we spent a lot of time reading the chapter and discussing each verse in detail, including how God's love is perfect.

Then everyone was assigned to make a heart-shaped collage on the theme "God is Love," keeping in mind our discussion. Each person was to somehow depict in art how he knew that God "first loved us" (1 John 4:19). I would show you the finished products but one of my sons said his was copyrighted and I couldn't post it without his permission, which he was not going to give.  :)  Maybe I'll add mine when it's finished.