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- Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
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- Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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- Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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- Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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- Happy President's Day.
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- Today is Monday, February 15th.
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- And of course, many of you are off work today because it is the national holiday called President's Day.
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- But that's not what I want to talk about today.
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- I'm actually going to talk about the holiday that many people celebrated yesterday.
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- And that is the day known as Valentine's Day.
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- Yes, yesterday was February 14th, Valentine's Day.
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- It was a day where many people celebrated with candy, cards, and showing their special someone that they care about them in some way.
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- And if you're in a church where, because yesterday was also Sunday, many of you probably heard some kind of a Valentine's Day message.
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- Maybe it was just something your pastor said during the sermon.
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- Maybe it was something that was said during the announcements or something.
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- I will say this, I made a point to mention after service that I actually made it through the whole service without mentioning Valentine's Day even one time.
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- And it wasn't necessarily purposeful that I didn't mention it, but it was just something that I didn't, it just didn't come up.
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- It wasn't part of my message.
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- It wasn't part of anything that I had planned.
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- But I imagine in many churches there were Valentine's Day mentions, as again, either during the announcements or sometime during the message.
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- And I do know this, a lot of people at our church yesterday were handing out cards and some were handing out little candy bags that they had made for one another.
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- And it was really a nice day.
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- It was encouraging to see people loving on each other on a day which is usually represented by the concept of love.
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- And usually love in a form of some form of love between a man and a woman.
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- But sometimes represented again by love of friends and that's why I saw people handing out friendship cards, Valentine's cards, things like that.
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- But what I wanted to talk about today is the history of Valentine's Day, give a little bit of a historical lesson because I like to do that from time to time on the show.
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- And because again today is a holiday for many of you, you may be off of work today.
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- And I want to make the show kind of short, give you an opportunity to listen through the show maybe while you're going through your morning routine.
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- And what we're going to talk about today is the legend of St.
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- Valentine.
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- Where do we get this idea for Valentine's Day? Why do we celebrate Valentine's Day? What is this all about? And right away we think about the fact that it's not really Valentine's Day.
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- It's typically when you see it written out, it's St.
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- Valentine's Day.
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- And so right away you say, well, who is St.
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- Valentine? Obviously that's referring to a person.
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- And St.
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- Valentine was a Christian leader in the third century.
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- Now the third century, if you remember how the calendar works as far as the centuries go, like right now we are in the 21st century.
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- The 2000s represent the 21st century.
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- The 1900s were the 20th century.
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- So if we go back to the third century, that would be the 200s.
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- And so if you think about that from a date wise, I believe Valentine lived and died in the year 270.
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- So he would have lived throughout the third century.
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- And according to legend, and I want to say up front, this could all be just legend, but according to legend, St.
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- Valentine was known as a man who went against a requirement which was made by Emperor Claudius.
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- And the requirement was this, Emperor Claudius recognized that soldiers were more apt to do their job well if they were unmarried.
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- If they didn't have the ties of a home life, specifically a wife and children.
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- And so Emperor Claudius made it a rule that his soldiers could not be married.
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- And the legend goes that St.
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- Valentine, again a leader in the church, one who was able to do weddings, a clergy, he took it upon himself to do private wedding ceremonies for the soldiers so that they could be married.
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- And this eventually led to him being caught.
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- This eventually led to him being arrested and being imprisoned.
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- Now the legend continues that he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer.
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- And in his relationship with her, he would write her letters and at the end of the letters it would say, love your valentine or sign your valentine.
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- And that's where we get the usually the phrase, you know, be my valentine or you're my valentine.
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- That's where this term comes from.
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- Now again, I want to say from the outset, this is one historical, this is one historical reference to valentine that I was able to find and read.
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- And I thought it was interesting.
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- I've seen some others about him healing, doing a miraculous healing on a blind girl.
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- That's another legend from the life of St.
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- Valentine.
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- And so I just found it interesting.
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- But the thing that gets me about the story that I told is if this is true, that Emperor Claudius made this rule that soldiers couldn't be married, and if it is true that St.
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- Valentine went against that rule and because of his desire to see men be married, went against the rule of the emperor and married people, then not only is Valentine then a really a representative of love, but he's also a representative of standing against tyranny in a time when ungodliness was ruling.
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- And so I thought, what better time than our modern context to remember someone who went against the leadership which was calling for an ungodly practice, and he stood against the ungodly tyrant even to the peril of his own freedom.
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- So if this story is true, and like I said, I know it's somewhat of an if there.
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- History is unclear for certain on the life of St.
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- Valentine, but if this is true, that not only was he a man who was celebrated for love, he should also be celebrated as a man who stood against the one who would oppose the things of God.
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- And we should be known as well as not only people who love, but also people who stand up for the truth and the things of God.
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- So this has been my Valentine's Day message here on Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- As I said, I intended this to be a short episode, and it has.
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- I hope you've enjoyed today's little history lesson, again, on the legend of St.
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- Valentine.
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- And I hope you have a great President's Day, and I look forward to having you come and listen to the program again tomorrow.
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- Thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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- May God bless you.
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- Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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- We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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- As you go about your day, remember this.
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- Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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- All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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- He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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- May God be with you.
