Happy Valentine’s Day!  It’s the day of love, and I hope this little corner of the internet can bring a little extra to yours.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of kindness.  It’s sometimes seen as fluff—nice to have, but not one of the important qualities, one that truly matters.  But that’s not true.

Truth is, we never know what people are going through—what hurts are being held down, hiding beneath the surface of a smile.  Kindness, when given at the right moment, can serve as salve to the soul.  It transforms a landscape of damage, defeat, and defensiveness, to one where tender spots are tended to.

In every interaction we have, we have the opportunity to either fill the heart-buckets of others a few drops, or poke little holes, draining them out from underneath.  Choosing to define our interactions by kind and uplifting comments, by the generous giving of love and words that bring life—it has the potential to prompt a ripple effect beyond what we can imagine.

Picture a pretty little purple bloom.  Like any plant, there are a few things it needs—sunlight, nutrients, water.  With these in place, it is free to flourish, to blossom fully and beautifully.

A healthy plant, when it receives enough water, undergoes something called transpiration.  This is the process by which water moves from the plant’s roots, to small pores on the underside of its leaves where it then transforms to vapor and vanishes into the atmosphere.

Essentially, plants are designed to release the water they receive.

But as this girl (with neither green thumbs nor the ability to keep a succulent alive) will tell you, things don’t always go according to design.  Plants don’t always receive enough water and when they don’t, the process of transpiration ceases to occur.  In this case, instead of releasing water, the pretty little purple bloom begins to retain it, unsure of when its next supply may come.

I don’t think us humans are so different from those pretty little purple blooms.  We were created with needs—the need to be loved chief among those.  In God’s perfect design, we were meant to release love onto those around us as a byproduct of the love we’ve first received.

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““We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19, ESV).”

But again, things don’t always go according to design.  We don’t always receive what we need, whether it be an actual absence of love, or perceived.  And when this happens, just like the pretty little purple bloom, we lose our ability to release.  We begin to retain the love we do have, resistant towards giving it away because we’re fearful of not having enough.

When we choose to be intentional about pouring love and kindness into others, not only are we filling their heart-buckets, we are also enabling them to fill the heart-buckets of those around them.

In celebration of today’s holiday, I thought it would be fun to issue a little challenge here, and see what sort of ripple effect we might be able to start.  Below are three simple ways to spread a little love and bring brightness to someone’s day.  I dare you to do at least one—you never know what it might mean to the person you choose!

As for me, I’m adding in a fourth way to spread a little love.  Today’s blog post is featuring a unique product called Devotions Delivered.  Founded with the mission of spreading the message of God’s love, Devotions Delivered makes postcards from the work of traveling photographers, each with a message meant to inspire and encourage the person who receives it.  I LOVE that it’s a creative way of supporting and showcasing the work of photographers, while also encouraging the person who receives the postcard.

I have four of these beautiful postcards from the California Love Collection, and I’d love to send one out to YOU with a handwritten note.  If you’d like one, just leave a comment at the end of this post with your email address, and I’ll reach out to you to get your mailing address, along with any specifics you’d like to share on how I can encourage and/or pray for you—the postcards will go to the first four comments.

For anyone else interested in Devotions Delivered, they’ve offered my readers 20% off site wide with the code LOVE20.

Wherever this Valentine’s Day may find you, I pray that you would know LOVE Himself, and that His love would fill your heart and spill over into the lives of those around you.

If you’re single this Valentine’s Day and looking for a little encouragement in this area, I have a resource for you—an online devotional for singles!  My heart in writing this was to speak the encouragement and truth I myself have needed to hear on the hard days.  If you’re watching all your friends get married, wondering when it will be your turn, or simply having a hard time waiting on God’s timing, this devotional is for YOU!