Valentine, a selfless friend

I find it sad that it was not until this past year that I learned of who Valentine really was. Why do we celebrate this day? I am not big into doing things, “just because it’s what we’ve always done”. I have to know the why; life has more meaning if you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s what I call living on purpose and not on accident.

 So, if you haven’t read the story of Valentine, I encourage you to do a search on his life. Basically, the general story (with its minor alterations of course, since no one has an accurate record) is that this Christian minister lived around 250 A.D. He lived in a tumultuous time of the Roman reign, when the Great Empire was on the brink of collapse. the Emporer had made a decree that no soldier was allowed to marry, in fear that they would not focus their duties to the Empire but instead to their own families. This, of course, will never build a nation, but merely tear it down, since our very existance and happiness depends on the stability and strength of the family. That is a whole blog in and of itself.

Christianity was not the religion of the day, still, and was persecuted with malice. Valentine was supposedly a noble man of the land and honored as such. He also preached Jesus and His love to all that he could. He married couples, although the law forbid it. He encouraged others and strengthened the scattered church. He was also a physician and helped many of the infirmed.

Some of his friends that he had married were caught and sentenced to death. Without thinking of his own life, Valentine went to the leaders and offered his own life, proclaiming openly that he was indeed a Christian. The agreed and took him to prison instead of his friends. While he was in prison, he ministered to the jailer’s daughter, who happened to be blind from birth. Blindness then was considered a curse of the “gods” and that you were a horrible condition. He taught her of the love God had for her and how she was not accursed. Before he was led to his execution, he prayed that the girl be healed. She was cured of her blindness.

Supposedly, the concept of giving notes of love also came from this Valentine, who sent words of encouragement on little papers, signed, “from your Valentine”. Not sure how accurate that one is, but it fits:)

At any rate, this holiday (holy day) is not the holiday commercialism mascarades it to be. Instead, it is a day created to commemorate and encourage all mankind of the love of Christ as exemplified in this man, Valentine’s, life. He stood bold in his faith for Christ and gave his life for his friends.  Jesus taught us that the greatest one among us is the servant of all. We are created to serve and give of ourselves, unselfishly, to one another. Whether it be in the home, among friends, or in the community, we are to be unselfishly dying out to ourselves in order that others may have the love of Christ in their lives.

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 8Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 13So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.