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For those we Love

Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to your never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that you are doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saturday is Valentine's Day! While the Episcopal Church doesn't commemorate St. Valentine, we know he may have been a few different people. There's a Valentine who was a priest and physician killed by Emperor Claudius II for marrying Christians early on in Rome. There was also a Bishop Valentine in Terni, Italy who was martyred around 240 AD. While neither is all that "romantic," you should still take time to eat some chocolate this week, and remember that you are loved by God to the depths of your very being.

St. Valentine

The Song of Songs. Elena Kotliarker

Whether St. Valentine and his clandestine attempts to help Christians wed is only legend or not, there story invites us to think about love in world that can be downright antagonist to, well, love.

For centuries in Christian thought, one of the most important books in the Bible, wasn’t actually Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Genesis, or the Psalms. It was the Song of Songs, an ancient — and pretty explicit! — romantic poem about love in a world fraught with danger. Over the centuries, the poem was interpreted as an unsurpassed figurative portrait of the love between God and God’s people.

What do you think. Is the world against love - real love? And what makes love real, anyway? How might God's love for us be like (and different) from the ways in which we think about "romantic" love?

Questions? Contact Sam

sam@stjohnsdecatur.org |662-656-653