Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

It's kind of refreshing to have a saint's day that is actually commonly remembered as a saint's day. Even though most people in the U.S. do not retain any religious associations with the Commemoration of Saint Patrick, at least we haven't lost that from the name, as we have with St. Valentine's!

Saint Patrick--the real Saint Patrick--makes for a remarkably good story. For one thing, he wasn't Irish--he was taken to Ireland as a teenager after being kidnapped by actual pirates. And we know more about him that about many other early saints, because we have some of his writings. We know that he worked to support Irish Christians and to convert the Irish to Christianity--we don't know a lot of the exact details, although of course there are many stories. My favorite is the legend that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Apparently, there never were any snakes in Ireland (it being an island), but still, it's pretty impressive, isn't it?

But what is really impressive about Patrick is that apparently he really did go back to the land where he had been enslaved. One might think that he would have hated the people and places of Ireland, but instead he loved them enough to share the gospel with them. That is a story I think we all need to hear from time to time.

Another interesting fact: Apparently, Saint Patrick's Day doesn't count as Lent in certain (probably Irish) circles, so if you were, say, giving up chocolate for Lent, today you could eat as much chocolate as you liked. (It's kind of like Sundays, which are always feast days, even during Lent, which is how you get the math to work out to have "40 days" in the season. Of course, if you exempt St. Patrick's Day as well, you end up with only 39.)

And, finally: Did you know that Saint Patrick's original color was actually blue? The thing with the color green is apparently a fairly recent innovation (in the last century or so).

~Pastor Sarah