AFTER MAKING A VALENTINE DESIGN, I NEEDED A CAPTION TO BRING IT TO LIFE
“And God said…” (Genesis 1:3)
I go a little overboard for Valentine’s Day. It started when my daughter was a young teen, and we were looking for a way to raise money for a museum trip to Costa Rica. We decided to host a Valentine ‘s party with crafts, refreshments, and the story of Saint Valentine.
Twenty years later I’m still celebrating with crafts, chocolates, and Robert Sabuda’s Saint Valentine, a children’s book illustrated with mosaics. I have a notebook of ideas: doilies turned into envelopes, cardstock pistols labeled “this is a stick up,” and embroidered “be mine” squares—literally dozens of ways to cut, glue, stamp, embellish, and fold messages that say I love you. The card shown here is a design I created this year for boys: a dinosaur with a heart-shaped sucker inside his toothy roar.
But I couldn’t think of a caption. What’s a Valentine without a message? I finally decided on, “Valentine, I could GOBBLE YOU UP!”
Without words, it’s hard to know what a picture means—there can be different interpretations. A good example of this happens each week on the back page of The New Yorker. Readers study a cartoon without a caption and submit ideas. The editors select the top three for publication, allowing readers to vote on their favorite. In November a cartoon showed a board meeting taking place, and in the chairman’s seat was a plant in a pot. Here are the three finalists: “We hired him to appeal to perennials.” “Finally, a C.E.O. who doesn’t suck all the oxygen out of the room.” “It’s amazing to think he started out in the lobby.” Each writer interpreted the picture in a different way.
Words give meaning to what we see, and God has endowed us with a capacity for soul expansion through words. We’re wired to respond to them. If you’ve heard the words, “Will you marry me?” you never forget the moment. Other words, such as “I’m sorry” from someone who hurt you, bring healing. Our children’s first words delight us; hateful words scar us. And we don’t just want words from humans. People train birds to speak, and pet owners coax words out of dogs and cats (it’s true; I saw it on youtube!). We love words and the way they make us feel.
God uses words to explain himself to us. The Bible’s stories, poems, proverbs, letters, laws, prophecies, and songs reveal a mission that spans human history. Like a good travel book, scripture recounts the past and explains the present. It also predicts the future.
We need those words. Although we sense a supernatural creator when we look at this beautiful world, it’s only through scripture that we understand its meaning. Think of the cultures that didn’t have it to explain the spiritual reality they felt. The Mayans created a god nourished by human sacrifice; the Egyptians, a Nile god with the face of a crocodile; and the Indians, a blue-skinned, four-armed god. If the world seemed to be a Valentine without a caption, they wrote their own.
From scriptures’ first pages, God lets it be known that words will be big—he speaks the world into existence. “And God said” repeats like a chorus through the creation story. The Bible doesn’t say, “and God made,” but that God said. When Christ appears, he isn’t simply a prophet or miracle worker; he is the Word. Even later in the Bible, words determine every person’s final destiny. Those whose name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will enter the heavenly City of God. Think of it! Words in a book will be the final proof of citizenship.
Creation, salvation, and entry into heaven rely on words.
This wonderful planet of sandy beaches and windy mountains, of playful dogs and chattering birds, of fragrant pines and white magnolias is God’s Valentine to us. Though flawed and bent by sin, it whispers of an imagination that once designed Eden. Its caption is God’s Word.
It holds a promise that will make a new Eden possible, the new heaven and earth. At the resurrection, the divine mouth is going to swallow up the thing that’s kept us in ruins. Scripture says our old enemy, Death, will be “swallowed up in victory.” Gobbled up by God and gone…forever! Now that’s a Valentine message to roar about.