The V-Day Series: Valentine's Anthem

Let me be at my best at Aaliyah's request
Love: never the destination, ever the quest
The still waters of love; the deepest frontier
Time suspended in joy as we remember our tears...
-Jigabod, "Valentine's Anthem"©

You know, St. Valentine's legend is a strange one... because there are three or four of them. St. Valentine's Day is even stranger; another pagan celebration with a Christian twist. I'm not gonna get into all that, you can find it on the Net with little or no effort. But I am gonna do this for St. Valentine...

While we don't know the true story of St. Valentine, one thing we do know is he was a saint; he was a Christian. So I feel it's only right to divulge the meaning of love as written in the Word. I think he'd appreciate that.

Love... well, the Bible says "God is love". Vague, cliche statement? Not as vague as we like to think; cliche only by superficial reasoning. Think about it... God in the person of Christ died for us; and He died for us not while we were saved, but while we were His enemies. Some of us might have enough love in us to die for our friends; how many of us would die willingly for our enemies? That's why God is love.

But that's not all. Did you know there's a "love chapter" in the Bible? Peep it, it's I Corinthians 13. You've probably heard it before: the whole "love is patient, love is kind, love is longsuffering" gig right? But shed some new light on it... It's not just saying that we should be this way if we claim love, but it's also saying that, since God is love, then God is that way toward us as well. Pretty profound huh?

And if you're into intimacy, there's the Song of Solomon, rated TV-14 (this isn't TV!) But lemme get off that, cuz I'm falling waaay off topic...

What does all this have to do with Valentine's Day? Well, ask yourself this... if it's all about this St. Valentine and Christian love, has the day lived up to it's title? If you think about it, it's more about this Cupid character than St. Valentine. So who is Cupid?...

...Easily one of the most misinterpreted characters in holiday history. no, he's not some cute (not cute to me), angelic, Roman, friendly-neighborhood-bowsman in the name of love. Emphasis on the "in the name of love" part. If you do a lil research, Cupid was really more about lust and sexuality than love. Wait a minute, lemme backtrack: that's assuming you know the difference between love and lust and the role of sexuali--- yo, you might wanna peep the earlier blog I wrote, "Love Conquers Lust, Right On". Basically, Valentine's Day started off as a pagan holiday about sexuality and fertility, and Cupid was one of the gods representing it.

So basically what we have is this pagan holiday continuing under this Christian title, and it's halfway about love and halfway about lust. But dadgommit... I'm sick of throwin out holidays mayn. And I kinda like this love thang. So I tried to wake up Mr. Valentine, but bruh was pretty dead. What to do... Well, since we believe in the same Jesus, I borrowed bruh's name a lil bit for this special occasion.

We've got fourteen days people. Let's make this Valentine's Day about love and not lust. And I think it would be best to start it with Valentine's Anthem.