Sacred Love
It is our 35th anniversary today! And I as I reflect on how thankful I am for my best friend, my wife, I’m also reflecting on what it is that enables us to keep going stronger than ever before, and what it is that makes us know that our love will never die. To take a look around us we see marriages, precious lives, fall like leaves from a tree, not with disdain so much as with tears, and we ask “Why?” You don’t have to dig very deep to know why.
It is primarily because marriage is no longer held up high as something sacred, something inviolable; and that is because we no longer fear God or love him enough to believe him when he tell us that it is he who created this union to be sacred, and decreed it for life. This is the very heart of the matter, the very center of the storm. It is why there is so much unfaithfulness, so little love, and so much contempt in marriage.
“Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate.” Matthew 19:6. This doesn’t mean until our feelings for one another die, or until a human judge decides our fate, it means until death parts us.
Evy and I made a pact when we were first married to never use the “D” word. We did this because we decided that first of all, divorce would never be an option – no matter what – because if our love was true, it will transcend anything. In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love never fails.” If the Bible is true, then this is true. Do you know what this does? It makes you stick it out; deal with things and work through the tough issues, because you haven’t given yourself any other option.
Scarce is the memory of a time when we for a moment could have let that word roll of our tongues, and followed the course of temptation; but we didn’t because we had an agreement, a covenant with one another and with God. And if we could break that agreement then something would be forever lost, and something in our very soul would die, something in our character would descend to the lowest place. When something is sacred, it declares by necessity what is forbidden, because of what is honored.
We decided on our wedding night that since God created our union, he would be indispensable to its protection. Instead of going in circles we went to his Word to see what he had to say about our disagreements—what principles there were to guide our thoughts and words. Our feelings usually followed, and so did our desire for a deeper love. Small squabbles took their place below a higher calling where it became harder to go lower than what we attained. And so what was honored endured the test of time—and for that we give God the credit.
That’s the point where love goes down in history, the stuff legacy’s are made of. At the end our lives we’ll look back and say we did it; hand in hand with God my wife and I did it. And through it all we were the best of friends.
December 4th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Your point is really different from others , but I know you are right . Thank you for your sharing.
April 7th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Well put. You hit on something very real which is that many people, indeed many believers, don’t have a healthy fear God, and because of this it’s very easy to walk in a ‘that doesn’t really apply to me’ way of life. I’d go a step further to say that coupled with that is the very real and sad fact that many husbands and wives don’t protect their own marriages or the marriages of others. While the word ‘boundaries’ seems bandied about a lot these days, very few people have them or honor them which leaves their marriages open to many little foxes come to spoil the vineyard.