By Tom More
During the holidays, my learners often scratch their heads trying to figure out the reason for the season. If one were to try to guess at Valentine’s Day’s logic, they might have particular trouble. Various traditions identify more than a dozen important church figures with this name, several of whom have connections to the date February 14. It is a matter of curiosity, however, that he became a symbol of romantic love.
An old fable about the saint suggests that the reason for his untimely death was that out of an impassioned love of love itself, he was caught secretly performing marriages against the wishes of the Emperor. Another recounts that moments before his death he sent a letter to a young woman and signed it, “from your Valentine.” A clear allusion to the traditions of today.
The most reliable history, however, describes a bishop boldly assisting other Christians, against the Emperor’s orders, in much different matters. Valentine was known as a powerful evangelist, sharing his faith shamelessly even with government officials, who coincidentally, were also his captors. He was known to lay on hands for healing, baptize those secretly coming to faith, and eventually dying, rather than taking the opportunity to repudiate his faith.
Quite a different picture! We would find it much harder to send our children to school with cartoon-clad, heart-shaped cutouts in honour of this second St. Valentine. The spirit of this second man’s legacy is driven home for us children of the pandemic when we learn that he conducted most of this ministry while under house arrest!
Many of us reasonably long for a return to normalcy while we too languish in a type of perpetual house arrest. “If only our church buildings would reopen and our programs could run like they once did!” We may have even signed a petition indicating the importance of an immediate return to the pews and familiar lobby coffee pots we have long trusted.
Friends, the Church is not closed, only our buildings. At the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, while many were cheering, the old priests who remembered the first temple wept at this unrecognizable replacement. Nehemiah commands them boldly, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Neh 8:10) God is doing something new in the rubble and ruins of what has been and will never be again.
While we may prefer the familiarity of our pre-COVID comforts to assist those learning English, maybe God is making new inroads available to us through the humility of simple love. While we corporately wonder at the duration of our current limitations, let us not freeze in the face of new opportunities. In recent weeks, our ESL group has decided to halve our participants so that we can double our focus on building loving relationships with those we know best. How is God challenging you to love within this liminal time, rather than pine for its end?