I realized embarassingly late in the game that today is Valentine’s day, so today’s post, which was mostly composed yesterday will appear tomorrow, by which time it hopefully won’t be decomposed. It’s about the Ephesians 4 fivefold ministries, as a precursor to further discussion on apostles, apostolic authority, the shepherding movement, and hierarchical leadership structures. At least that’s where I think it’s going.

Today, however, I must pause and mention Valentine’s day… the day we celebrate the beheading of St. Valentine in 278. Or something like that. You may correctly infer from the aforementioned realization that I’ve got some last-minute shopping to do today. Hmmm, flowers or chocolate? I need to mark the day, since it has now been mathematically proven that I have exactly a snowball’s chance in hell of dating my wife. Really — as Brant Hansen shows, there’s an actual mathematical formula for calculating a guy’s odds of getting the girl. Go on, try it. Like Brant, it seems I beat the odds astronomically… despite those odds, my wife and I will have been married 19 years this spring. And all of that without understanding the “hidden complexities behind the simple act of kissing” (as documented in Scientific American). Does this make St. Valentine the patron saint of long odds? Sounds good to me.

I’ve got another odd thought today about love though… I noticed a card signed “Love,” by one of my daughters and realized that I don’t think we ever told our girls what the word “love” means. How would you provide a good definition, anyway? It seems like one of those words that you just pick up and understand intuitively. We tell our kids we love them as babies, then as they grow to understand language more and you keep telling them, they just don’t need to have the meaning explained, they just know. Certainly enough to say it back to you. Is that weird?