The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that about 190 million valentines are sent in the United States each year. Early in our relationship my husband and I decided that on special occasions we would give each other beautiful cards rather than gifts. His cards are among my most cherished keepsakes, each a reminder of our love, romance, and joy. Though I miss him every day and a thousand times on Sunday, our love lives forever in my heart, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven” (Psalm 85:10-11 NIV).

   Faithfulness is perhaps the most important underlying covenant in loving relationships. Faithfulness implies mutual trust. Faithfulness assumes spiritual fidelity and emotional loyalty. Do we always get this right? No, not always. But if we work at perfect faithfulness, relationships grow. They become not only deeper, but also richer and stronger.

   Faithfulness is a two-way commitment that is non-negotiable—either we are faithful, or we are not. There is no version of faithfulness any more than there is a version of the truth. If we trust in the perfect faithfulness of God in our life, why do we engage in prayer-like negotiations with God? We want God to be faithful to us, but as humans too easily we justify and rationalize a compromise in our faithfulness to God. Belief in God’s perfect faithfulness is our greatest defense and best hope for navigating and surviving whatever challenges we encounter in life, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23 NRSV).

   The Bible is about God’s faithfulness to humankind. We learn from every story, narrative, psalm, and history lesson in Scripture that God’s faithfulness is a non-negotiable promise, even when, like so many others before us, we wander and stray from the presence of God, “The Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 34:2 RSV). God is perfectly faithful.

   For many months after my husband died, I struggled with the order of love in my life. As I grieved his death, I anguished over whether I had put my love for him above my love for God. I thought about whether there was some hierarchy of love or qualification for God’s faithfulness that I had gotten wrong. One day I realized that love coexists. One love does not exclude another. Love is not either/or. God ordains our love. God blesses every expression of our love, “God is love” (1 John 4:16). The divine nature of love is not to limit, to control, or to possess our love, but that we love because God first loved us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31:3).

   The assurance of God's faithfulness is that love is. Love is everlasting. Love is eternal. Love is real, “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:7-8 NIV).

   The exponential power of love is that the more there love is, the more love there is to give away. Love is limitless. Love is infinite. Love never dies. Rather, the power of love transcends every circumstance of life, even death, “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen” (I Corinthians 13:7-8 PHILLIPS).  

For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.
Psalm 26:3