Valentine

Images of a fat little imp with a bow and arrow, piercing the heart to gain affection for another.  Candy and flowers and cards.  Love notes and romantic overtures.  Dressing up and dinner out.  Pledges of love, purchasing gifts, picking out rings.  Valentine's Day is here!

The pledges of undying love...from your Valentine.  Are actually based on a dying proclamation, at least, so the story goes.  The Catholic Saint Valentine was a Roman priest serving during the reign of emperor Claudius who had ordered an edict against marriage of young people based on the belief that single soldiers fought better than married ones who carried the concerns for wives and family with them into battle.

Valentine secretly performed weddings as he believed in the sanctity of marriage and wanted young people to honor God with a Christian marriage, which meant committing to one individual for a lifetime (undying love).  

As the story goes, he was found out and imprisoned.  His final judgment was a death sentence, which included a three-fold execution of beating, stoning and decapitation.  During his judgment period, it is said that one of the men to sit in judgment was named Asterius who had a daughter that was blind.  Valentine prayed for her and she regained her sight, prompting Asterius to become a Christian himself.  It is said that the priest's last note was to Asterius's daughter and ended with the words "...from your Valentine."

I don't know how much is true about Valentine but I do know that the message of promoting marriages, which honor God over and against government edicts is something I can get behind.  God designed marriage to be the matrix of family, which is the foundation for society.  His plan, "from the beginning, making us male and female so that a man would leave his father and mother and be united with his wife" (Matt 19:4-6) was, is and ever will be the pattern we ought to follow, regardless of emperors or federal courts.  

The law of the land tells us what man can do, the law of God tells us what man ought to do.  A man ought to marry a woman for a lifetime.  That is the story behind Valentine's Day and that is the purpose behind God making us "male and female to be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen 1:27-28), which is to say, make babies and build families.  Jus' Say'n.