It’s February and that means cold–and love!–is in the air. After a long, dreary January, everyone looks forward to the bright reds and pinks of Valentine’s Day, the fun of focusing on something joyful for the shortest and coldest month of the year. We eat candy, send flowers, share cards, and celebrate the warmth of love in our lives.

But love is a lot more than candy hearts and flowers or a way to keep warm on a cold winter’s night. Most of us, even those who are not Christians, have heard these verses from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). They remind us that love is hard work. We can’t take love for granted nor think that, once the words are said, they need never be said again. They must be said–and meant–regularly. And they must be backed up with actions that demonstrate that love to those for whom we care.

It can feel impossible to live up to the standard of love about which Paul writes (especially when the people around us are not as perfect as we would like them to be!). It may help to remember that Paul was not talking about romantic love, but about the love Christ has for each of us. When you look at it that way, you can see that this love is an ideal. We may not reach it, but we are to constantly strive for it. We know that we will fail because we ourselves are far from perfect, but it doesn’t mean we stop trying. After all, God doesn’t stop loving us because we are not perfect!

So this month, I challenge you to live out this love. Try for one day to be more patient with others. Choose to do the kind thing. Don’t brag about yourself but ask about the other person and listen carefully to what they have to say. Take a deep breath if you become irritated or resentful; don’t insist that you must always be right but try to see the situation from the other person’s point of view. Rejoice when you see someone doing something good instead of nagging them for doing something wrong. Try to bear, believe, hope, and endure for one whole day. And perhaps, when it comes to an end, you will find that while you weren’t perfectly loving, it also wasn’t as hard to love as you thought it would be. May that give you the courage to try it again the next day…and the next…and the next…until living out love comes as naturally as enjoying warmth on a cold February day.