|
Today's Quote
|
|
Today's Verse
|
|
Daily Wisdom
|
Marriage is strange yet commonplace at the same time, taken for granted yet challenged on every hand, and universal yet uniquely defined by every culture. In many cultures it is a matter of expediency --sex is practiced indiscriminately by youth and marriage mainly used to keep society orderly.
For Christians marriage is a great mystery -a previously sinful and forbidden relationship becomes holy and blessed following a short ceremony. Bible marriages were often formed to create alliances between tribes or nations. Even in Jesus' time daughters were given in marriage. The implication of this giving is that daughters were chattel to be bargained at a father's will.
Even in modern Western marriages the father gives the bride away. Although, today, the giving carries a feeling of loss rather than of a bargain struck.
Bible marriages were arranged and it was assumed that love would grow over time. Leah bore Jacob four children ever hoping that with each child Jacob would learn to love her. Instead, he loved another.
In the West there is an assumption that for each girl there is, somewhere in the world, a Mr. Right. The truth is that we generally marry the girl next door. Proximity is the great matchmaker, and love grows between those thrown together by circumstance just as it does between those selected by loving parents.
The amazing thing is that love can grow. We often say that absence makes the heart grow stronger. Even Solomon wrote that too much time together could lead to hatred (Proverbs 25:7). In spite of the fact that people living together can get on one another's nerves, marriages can survive. The world over, human nature is defied and couples live together in relative harmony.
Social pressures bring about much of the success of marriage. In America, however, the pressure is becoming less and less as divorce becomes acceptable. Christians, of course, have several advantages with the guidance of God. Still, it is with a sense of respect, amazement, and thanksgiving that we salute the members of the Lake Travis congregation whose anniversaries are announced in the church calendar every week. Congratulations!
