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Notes from a messy desk....

February 2012

True Love

Oh yes, the month of looooove.  February is the month we resurrect our Christmas red clothing…the ones without any green or bells or snowmen.  Perhaps we don a heart shaped necklace or brave out a frilly scarf with hearts and arrows.  Now, there is a good chance, we just chose to ignore it.  We used to anticipate this annual ritual.  Remember decorating your old cardboard shoe box with pink, white, and red construction paper?  Finding new uses for Elmer’s glue and a variety of construction paper hearts?  We cannot forget the white paper doily.  Those who had access to the white paper doilies rocked.  Which package of valentines do you select?  The old fashioned ones with little Gibson girls on them or the mod ones with Scooby Doo?  (Yes, I know, I am so dating myself here.)  Perhaps you fretted over who would give you a valentine (this was before class list and the unspoken mandate you must give one to everybody).  Did you dare give the cutest valentine you had to cutest boy in the class?  And so begins our love/hate relationship with St. Valentine’s Day.

A few years back, after hearing too many women say they hate St. Valentine’s Day, I got upset.  Not just a little upset but huffing and puffing perturbed.  Why should any women ever say she hated a day dedicated to True Love?  I know why these women said that to me, there was a history of unmet expectations or revulsions of another commercialized manipulation of our pocketbook.  But it is True Love we are celebrating.  History appears to point the beginning of this ritual way back to Roman days. In the third century, when Emperor Cladius II declared no young soldiers could marry as it made them weaker soldiers.  Priest Valentine defied this decree and secretly married the young soldiers to their loves.  Upon discovery of this treason, Valentine was martyred.  Hence,  Saint Valentine.  Perhaps there was more to this story.  Perhaps there was a dedicated Christian Priest, who defied a Roman Emperor when he martyred and tortured Christians, when he helped them escape their imprisonment. There are other legends that portend true love unjustly separated where a well-crafted verse declared the eternity of their love.  No matter what the legend, we can celebrate True Love. 

This begs the question, as a woman madly in love with Jesus Christ, how can I celebrate a day my community dedicates to True Love?  Sure, one can ignore it or if one is married, you can outline how your spouse is suppose to celebrate it with you.  There is always the making a fuss of it with the children in your life or gathering your girlfriends and celebrating that precious gift of friendship.  Oh, but there is so much more potential!  True Love!  True Love tells me I need to hug every woman I see on the 14^th.  True Love tells me I need to share the source of True Love on the 14^th.   True Love demands of me that I invest in people not just on February 14^th but from every St. Valentine’s Day until the next St. Valentine’s Day and then the next St. Valentine’s Day, et al. Now this is something to celebrate…

 “We love because he first loved us.”

1 John 4:19(NIV)

Pastor Orleen Haseltine

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