Happy Valentines Day everyone...yeah, right?!? (heavy sarcasm here) Now please do not mistake me as anti-romance, I love wooing and being wooed. I will must admit that I refuse, simply refuse to do anything on the Fall marketing holiday known as Sweetest Day. On Valentines Day, it is something different, something worth noticing. First, long before I even read the New Covenant, Valentines Day was the wedding anniversary of my Bubbie and Zaddie (Yiddish for grandma and grandpa). When I was young and in elementary school Valentines Day was a day when all the students had a brown lunch bag with everybody's name on the outside. The entire class would then dispense one generic card to each lunch bag. Silly I know, but it defiantly beat being picked last in gym!
As for my daughter-Valentine, we went for the fifth year to the local Daddy-Daughter Dance. SF will always be my Valentine. I always cry, actually we both cried as we danced to "Butterfly Kisses . I know, aaahhhhhhhhh. For my beautiful wife I assembled an assortment of cool things, and of course chocolate; if she doesn't eat I will!
Even though we are passing gifts this year, we are not a couple that usually does this, exchanging gifts. For me Valentines Day is an extremely "messed up with the facts" day. Today is one of those failed experiments created when the early Church merged a pagan holiday to a Christian theme. Read this blog by the NPR for a great short history of Valentines Day. Dark Origins of Valentines Day. You see?
Still, if we recognize today, then we must go to 1 Corinthians for a true look at love & charity. Never forget that charity is love.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
1 Cor 13:1-10 (KJV)
