by General Secretary Ivan Abrahams
As February approaches a warm and welcome sight appears throughout the areas near the World Methodist Council headquarters – hearts! Pink ones, red ones – each of them are signaling the celebration of St. Valentine’s Day. This is a day that people set aside to celebrate love and romance, and the reminders are a warm and pleasant contrast to the chill in the air and the grey in the skies of winter in the mountains.
If you are amongst those that celebrate St. Valentine’s Day in this manner, you are aware that love is not something one celebrates only one day of the year. We know that love is something we nourish and cultivate every day of our lives. We do our best to support our spouses and families; we go out of our way to thank our friends for enriching our lives.
On St. Valentine’s Day I will have the pleasure of presenting the 2012 World Methodist Peace Award in Sydney, Australia to Joy Belazo. I find it extremely fitting that on a day spent celebrating romance and love I will take part in a ceremony to honor a woman who promotes peace. The pursuit of peace and reconciliation is the ultimate form of selfless love; it’s a love for all of God’s creation.
My challenge, to each and every person in our global church family, is to spend every day pursuing peace. Just as we don’t spend just one day in February loving those around us, why should we only celebrate peace once? Every day is a chance for us to fight injustice, to help the meek, to feed the hungry and to love our neighbor. When the great conductor of the train of life stops at our station to collect us for our ultimate journey, the question we will answer is did we do everything we could to live a life full of compassion, love and service?
