Sunday, February 14, 2021
JESUS IS MY VALENTINE!
Song 8:7
7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. [All the stuff in a man’s house would not equal the value of love.]
Today is Saint Valentine’s Day. This day commemorates the martyrdom of Valentinus, a priest during the rule of Claudius II. Under Claudius, Rome was engaged in wars on many fronts and Claudius suspended weddings and marriages because he thought his soldiers would be distracted by romance and family. He needed strong soldiers who had no attachment to wife and children.
Valentine secretly and illegally performed weddings in violation of the emperor’s ban. He was eventually discovered and placed in prison. While in prison he sent letters to his friends asking them to pray for his release. He was executed on the 14th of February in the year 269 or 270. He is remembered on this day as one who encouraged love.
There is another martyr who was pretty keen on love. His name is Jesus and He died loving you with an unquenchable love. A river of blood could not quench His love and the Bible asks the question: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Mark 8:36-37 Jesus is my Valentine. His love letter is the Bible.
C. S. Lewis said: If God is love, he is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though he has often rebuked us and condemned us, he has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
Dear Lord, thank you for loving me with an everlasting and self-sacrificing love. AMEN
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