Tuesday, February
14, 2023
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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