Do you remember your first Valentine card from your first love? I remember exchanging Valentine cards and hoping to have a special note from that special little girl that I had a big crush. She wrote in my Valentine, “Would you be my Valentine.” Being the dummy I was I discovered that she had written that in every card she gave to the class.
Tucked away in my old Bibles are Valentine cards that my three children Andy, Angela, and Aaron have given me through the years. I keep them and read them when they are angry with me.
Through the years I have been to many Valentine banquets. Some have been very formal and many have been simple. Some have been humorous and some have been serious. There have been those with TV personalities and some with well-known preachers and church leaders. There have been those where the menu included steak and potatoes, ham and potato salad, chicken and green beans and always a red velvet cake.
I have been the guest and I've been the host. I have been the keynote speaker, one who served, and been the headwaiter. I have been with my sweetheart, my wife, my daughter, and widows.
One church where I was pastor we planned a Valentine Banquet for the senior adults where our young people served and the adult ladies' class cooked. I had been involved with many church banquets and had very few problems planning and hosting events. But one would have thought I had asked the adult ladies to prepare for the Queen of England and all her entourage.
The adult ladies' teacher went ballistic. She panicked saying that they could not cook for huge number of senior adults, all fifty of them. All the adult ladies were great cooks and cooked for numerous Sunday dinners on the ground, but the teacher had a medulla oblongata malfunction, in other words, she went crazy.
She called a meeting after church one Sunday prior to the banquet, which several of the senior adults attended. She fussed and fumed saying her class could not do such an undertaking. I reminded her that the church was buying the food, the young people were serving, and I would help, but it was useless. I could not understand her dilemma knowing that six ladies from a former, smaller, church I pastored fed members from six churches at a countywide Thanksgiving supper and had plenty of leftovers. I felt embarrassed for the senior adults were hurt by her actions. Thank God one of the class members who volunteered to do it. Three volunteers cooked a feast fit for the Queen of England for the senior adults, whom many are now gone to be with the Lord.
At another church, we had just completed a new family life center. I thought it would be wonderful to have a formal Valentine banquet for our youth, you know one where everybody dressed up. This church was very casual in their attire. In fact they were too casual. They said the casual dress was not to offend unchurched people and those who rode the church van. They did not want to “run them off.”
Right off the bat, I was confronted. I received a lecture on the destitute status of many of our youth, how my expectations were too lofty, and my feelings too callous. One would have thought I had asked them to dress in evening gowns and tuxedos for the presidential inaugural ball.
Knowing the spiritual immaturity of this member, I asked her if her daughter went to the prom, if she participated in beauty contests, or if she went to school dances. She concurred that she did. I asked her if she dressed for those events as she did for church. She politely told me that her daughter did not. I said that it is a shame that parents would spend hard-earned money for tuxedos and evening gowns for worldly events and would dress shabby when attending the house of God.
That was over a decade ago. I agree with a pastor friend who said of people who lead in worship at large events now days. He said it looks as if these people need a comb for their hair, a razor for their beards, and an iron for their clothes.
The Bible is our Valentine and worship is our banquet. I want to dress as if meeting a king when I attend church, because Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love (I John 4:8 KJV).
. . . for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings . . . (Revelation 17:14b KJV).
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