Valentine's Day

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   Growing up, I never saw much use for Valentine's Day. Of course if you're married, and your husband brought you some flowers --- great! But for everybody else, I could see no use for the day. 
This is what I didn't know!

    The history of Valentine's Day goes back as far as 270 A.D. and started with a clash between a kindly priest and a mighty ruler. 
   When Claudius II became emperor of Rome, he felt that married men were more emotionally attached to their families, and therefore would not make good soldiers. So he made an edict forbidding marriage to ensure quality soldiers.
  St. Valentine believed this was wrong! Marriage is God's idea and no Emperor can hinder what God created!!! He knew that if he married couples secretly he could go to prison, but decided that obeying God was worth the risk. 
   So Valentine and his sidekick Marius, (who served with him in the church) performed weddings in the woods, under the cover of the night's darkness. St. Valentine was arrested for marrying couples against the emperor's law, and eventually martyred for refusing to worship the Roman gods & deny his faith. 

   The story behind Valentine's Day is more than chocolates flowers and fuzzy feelings. This Valentine's Day, I'm going to remember St. Valentine and his courage to marry couples in secret, tell the emperor about Jesus, & love no other god but the one true God alone!!! 

    "You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you shall speak." Matthew 10:18-19

   I'd like to go back in time and hear what Valentine said to the Emperor in that hour. And did Claudius ever turn to God before his death?
Paul says in Romans 1:16 : 
    "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."
        And Mark 8:38 says:
"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when hecometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." 
  What would you have said, in Valentine's shoes; standing before the emperor? 

One last thought for my fellow singles:
       CONTENTMENT. 
Don't have it but wish you did? Take heart, & stop wishing: it's something we LEARN! We can learn to rejoice in our singleness! I don't have it down, but Paul sure did! Look at what he says in Philippians 4:11!
   
"Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."
   HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!

I hope this is an encouragement to you, & if you have any thoughts, questions or criticism, I'd be happy to hear it!!! 
~Thanks for reading & God bless~

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