It is my personal opinion that marriage is the hardest thing a person can do in life. Harder than parenting as kids eventually grow up and the relationship changes (they leave the nest). You see, you take two people with God’s gift of free will and yoke them together and by God’s grace there are moments of harmony. Similar to an old fashioned three-legged race, the participants frequently fight against the yoke that binds them together but occasionally experience the rhythm necessary to move forward.
Even biblical tales of marriage include challenge:
- Adam & Eve (Genesis 3:12 - “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit…”)
- Abraham & Sarah (Genesis 12:11-13 - “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well…”)
- Then Abraham’s son Isaac & Rebekah (Genesis 26:6,7 - “So Isaac stayed in Gerar. When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She is my wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.”)
OK, just to be fair I am sure that wives have done some less-than-stellar things too, they just weren’t written about as much in the Bible.
I believe that the problem begins before the wedding dress is purchased or the hall reserved. First, couples tend to RUSH IN. There are a few factors to this… we believe Mr./Miss. Right is a limited time offer, we DO buy the book by its cover, we figure that we can ‘work out the details later’, or in the far back recesses of our brains we figure that we can always get out later if it turns out to be a train wreck. This is one of the reasons the divorce rate in almost equal between Christians and those who claim no religious affiliation. It is the human nature. God says "Be still and know that I am God" in Psalm 46 because He knows that waiting and trusting are not in our nature. We tend to trust ourselves first just hoping that it will work out. When we consider something as serious as the life-time commitment of marriage before God, stand back, observe and wait is not our usual route.
Feel free to toss in your comments and check back with my next post as I continue the discussion about this.
Take care-
3 comments:
WOMEN/WIVES WHO WERE LESS THAN STELLAR IN THE BIBLE? OK. Yeah.
Delilah
Potiphar's Wife
Eve
Athaliah
Jezebel
Jael
Sapphira
Michal
Salome
Herodias
I'm just saying ... SOMEBODY STOP ME!
OK, now I am laughing! I knew someone would catch me on it...
I will try to achieve 'fair and accurate' at some point.
Lol....PK and Lisa! I don't know who half of those women are, but leave it to Mr. Encyclopedia to know them by heart...lol. JK! :)
Ok, now down to the serious stuff, there is something I have found in my life to be even harder than marriage. That is divorce and ending it. Let me assure all of you even considering it, being single is not all you might think it is. Randy and I married right out of HS. We were married for 20 years, but over time we grew apart and as we "grew up" we found we were very different from one another. No big arguments, nothing terrible...nothing we couldn't have worked on. It just happened...we weren't saved and the grass SEEMED greener. Well, it's not. I have been single for 10 years, because I refuse to settle...and I will never divorce again, so I have to be sure. At any rate...cherish what you have, because it could most certainly be better than anything you might find down the road. Take it from me...
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