Sisters,

It’s the season of chocolates and heart-shaped everything … and loneliness and ache and isolation and the nagging question that plagues us in this fallen world: “Am I loved?”

God loves you. His love for you is rooted in creation and redemption. Hold on…I know you don’t want to hear trite clichés. But sister, bear with me for a few minutes.

He crafted woman in secret. We know about man being formed from the dirt (Genesis 2:7), but woman was made from flesh (where’d it come from?) and Adam’s side (Genesis 2:21). God lavished woman’s creation with His sole concentration, but with an added sense of mystery. If humanity is music, then from the start, we were a riff with distinct notes singing the likeness of God.

The church cannot be silent while the world addresses the worst social injustice of our times.

 Several months ago a street vendor named Rosa Elvira Cely placed a desperate call to Colombia’s national emergency number on her cellphone. “I’m in the national park,” she said. “They are raping me! They are raping me!”

Police in Bogotá couldn’t respond fast enough. When they found Rosa she was unconscious and barely breathing. She had stab wounds in her back, she had been raped and beaten, and a jagged piece of wood had been shoved into her vagina. Official reports said the 35-year-old single mother, who had been studying to finish high school, had been impaled.

In life, things happen—both good and bad. That’s just how life is. We all desire good things, of course, but unfortunately, bad things are inevitable. Just when things are going well, it often seems that something happens that steals the life we know, robs us of our joy, and strips us of hope. When these types of negative disruptions take place, it stops us in our tracks, oftentimes draining us of the ability to live life with joy and happiness--the way Jesus intended. It can cause us to disconnect from life.