Until It Did

When our girls were very young, they often drew pictures on construction paper, cut out oddly-shaped hearts, or carefully scrawled their names on a store-bought card (if I remembered to buy it) to wish their great grandmother a Happy Valentine's Day.  

I didn't think it really mattered much.  Until it did.

When she passed away so many decades ago, suddenly drifting away to the Other Side of life in her sleep, we helped clean up her fairly-sparse apartment.  We uncovered surprises along the way.  One drawer in a side table was filled to the brim with greeting cards and construction paper pictures that our girls had sent her.  She had not just read the cards.  She kept them.  And I can imagine on quiet days when she was all alone --on which there were many-- she looked through those messages and knew that she was loved.

It was a whole drawer of singular messages multiplied over time.  We loved her and wanted her to know that.

Love is not just seeing needs of people all around us, but seeing the people behind those needs. Loving others by responding to them. You are seen.  You are heard.  You are loved.  That is reflected by more ways, words, flavors, packages and dimensions than we can realize.  Never forgotten.  Never insignificant.

I felt the need this morning to repeat a Nightly Tea post about the real story of Saint Valentine's Day as a reminder. 

Happy Valentine's Day, my friend.

It occurred to me this Valentine's Day that somehow the "saint" part has been dropped.   Saint Valentine's Day has evolved into just another holiday whose origin has been forgotten and has morphed into another excuse to eat chocolate.  Ask any child in this generation about what Valentine's Day means, and it won't be about a saint.

Valentine, known as Valentinus, was a priest who lived in Rome in the mid-200s AD when being a Christian meant certain death.  He aided Christian martyrs during their persecution, and as a result was arrested and imprisoned.  He survived in jail for a year before he was brought before the emperor Claudius the Second who offered Valentinus to save his life if he worshipped the Roman gods.  Valentinus refused.   He was condemned and martyred on February 14, 270 AD, beaten by clubs, stoned and beheaded.  Hardly a Hallmark moment.

Legend tells that before his death, Valentinus fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, who along with her father had converted to Christianity.  As a way of saying good-bye on the eve of his death, he wrote her a message and signed it, “From Your Valentine.”  The jailer and his daughter were also later sentenced to death by the emperor.  Chocolate and soft music did not enter the picture until centuries later.

And it seems very appropriate that a holiday that is associated with love is also associated with God.  Valentinus risked his life and died a martyr’s death not to earn God’s favor or gain points with God.  Valentinus did it because he loved God.  He knew what God’s love meant.  It was not something he deserved or earned, but because that is how God revealed Himself to us. 

Valentinus was not an exceptional man, but an ordinary person.  What distinguishes a saint or any faithful Christian is not a special mandate, but their response to the circumstances around them.  They have no special powers, nor do any of us, but they loved God with listening ears, willing hearts, and eyes wide open. 

"They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing, they did something about it.  They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response," noted A. W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God.

Those who love God and follow Him are just people like ourselves, but by responding to God in the ordinary, they know how to respond to God in the extraordinary.  They have been trained by the everyday patterns, practices and transformative habits they have chosen.  

A friend recently told me about a young man who had a sometimes-working car and had been given another mediocre used car.  She suggested selling the two and buying something better.  He replied, "Oh, I was going to give one away.  I know so many right now who need a car."

My guess is that this was not a solitary act of personal selflessness, but a pattern in his life.   He couldn't think otherwise, because he had done it so many times before, even in the unrecognized, even in what would be considered much smaller kindnesses. 

A saint chooses to do something about it.  A saint chooses to love others.  And God gives the power to do that.  Even in "the little stuff" which is never insignificant at all.

And He calls us to be and do the same and distinguished by His grace in us.  

"...loved by God and called to be saints."  Romans 1. 7 

And that's what St. Valentine's Day is all about.