This Sunday fell on Saint Valentine’s Day. According to church history, Valentine was a Christian priest, or possibly a Bishop, living in Rome who was martyred on February 14th in 269 AD during the reign of Claudius II for the crime of marrying Christian couples against the orders of Caesar. In time, he would be recognized for this heroic act and would become the patron saint of lovers as well as beekeepers and epileptics. However, it is ironic, isn’t it, that the man for whom the day was named was most likely a celibate Priest? Yep, that’s right, it’s strange to say, but Valentine, whose name is now thoroughly associated with romantic love and candlelit dinners, was a single man, and apparently not a beekeeper or an epileptic either.
Last year, around this time, we kicked off a four week sermon series on marriage, and in the first message of that series I addressed the singles in the congregation by saying, “Some of you are single or widowed, and I imagine you wondering sarcastically when a church is going to do a sermon series on God’s heart for single people and how would all the married people like to sit through that for four Sundays in a row?” Remember that? Well, I didn’t forget about you, and, although it won’t be for four Sundays in a row, this Valentine’s day we will be exploring, kind of ironically, what the Bible says about being single to the glory of God.