Fall in Love with Your City

As a way to show him love, I’m giving him the city this year. Our city already has won our hearts and we love our city by giving her our gift in the form of a church community. Isn’t that just the greatest thing we can do for the places we call home? Give our cities a biblical community where they can explore the faith, ask the questions, and belong before they believe.

We cannot call Anytown, USA home and it not have our heart.

We cannot be pastor and pastor’s wife of said city and not have feelings for the place.

We cannot serve our God and not love the place He has called us to love. We should have a love relationship with our cities. And like any relationship, they can break our hearts, drive us mad, complicate things, change their values, and push us out. Then the test of the relationship comes – will we continue to love when we’re not loved back? That’s love.

So with my pastor’s wife salary, I’m off to the local art shop to get a map of our city framed for him. The map was actually sold as a sheet of gift wrap. {Ladies, I don’t spend $10 on a sheet of gift wrap. This sheet of gift wrap deserves a frame!}

On Valentine’s Day, I’ll surprise him by hanging it just above his books stacked beside our bed. A map of our city – the place that represents people to whom God has entrusted to us. As a way to show him love, I’m giving him our city this year.

What’s something special you are doing for your valentine this year or a great gift from year’s past?


Published February 7, 2014