All this fuss about Valentine's Day . . . .

All this fuss about Valentine's Day . . . . Why not? The most popular legend is that St Valentine - a priest from Rome - was arrested after secretly marrying Christian couples, who were being persecuted by Emperor Claudius II in the third century AD. As helping Christians was considered a crime, St Valentine was imprisoned; while in jail he attempted to convert the emperor to Christianity and was condemned to death. He was beaten with stones and clubs, before being beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate. According to some, while in prison St Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and sent her a love letter signed ‘from your Valentine’ on February 14, the day of his execution, as a goodbye. Wow . . . love and marriage . . . it was once worth going to jail over . . . just think! Now, people do not think it is necessary. Let's just live together. Let's get a divorce. Marriage, after all, is only a piece of paper. Not so for Valentine and not so for GOD!

“Have you not read that He who  made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’  and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

As we celebrate today and even as our little ones share innocent greetings with one another, my prayer is that we do not forget to be reminded that marriage is still sacred in the eyes of God and worth dying for even today!

After all, it reflects the relationship between our Lord and Savior and you and me! (Ephesians 5:32)