how to say, "i love you"

I am sure Valentine's Day has some closet fans, but as the day approaches it seems like you always hear more noise from the staunch love-pessimists that gripe about their infinite singleness. They treat single-life as if it were a loveless-life, which is horrible and untrue. Jesus tells us in John 15:13, "Greater loves has not man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend." I remember God striking my mind--as if with a burning ember--with these words one evening as I sat staring out at the Puget Sound wrestling with the big question of love. I heard the message clearly. There have been times that I have been trouble by how I feel inside. I have wondered, how greatly do I love "this" person. Thinking that love meant either staying or leaving. As though love was something transient or based upon the extent I appreciated certain features of a person's personality. Jesus' asked a man of conviction, "who is your neighbor." Without waiting for a response he launched into the story of the Good Samaritan. We still read the story as if we were the helper. That is an untrue reading. We are the hurting, the broken, the beat-up, the bruised and waiting. The purpose of the story is to show that we need others, such is the way we were created. We even need those people that seem strange to us, like Samaritan's. Once I was in a young boy-young girl relationship (though it might be hard for you to imagine). Trying to be a good Puritan, I tried hard to convince the beautiful young girl that we did not need each others. It was not true. We all need each others. "No man is an island" (thank you, John Donne, I should have listened to you when you first told me this). We often let our heart weaken between the false dilemma of "to love" or "not to love." This dilemma is false, even hurtful, because we are never meant to think about not loving. Because "love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7-8). Always love. Only by God's great and gentle grace can we move beyond this dilemma to always love. Oh, there is more, but to hear you will have to come on Sunday to hear the next sermon: How to Say, "I Love You."