“Mahwidge…mahwidge is what bwings us togetha today…”

Please pardon the old movie referred to in the title.  If you don’t know where it’s from, no worries–it’s not worth it.

We’re coming up on thirty-eight years, Bob and I.  Old-timers know how the stars in the eyes you both had walking down the aisle fade pretty quickly after maybe five years. 

How about five minutes?

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because communication patterns have to be adapted to each other’s personality type, fatigue level, ongoing external stresses, and for some of us, that time of the month.  Just bein’ real here.

Here’s one strategy that generally doesn’t work too well:

It’s better to live alone in the corner of an attic
    than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home.

It’s better to live alone in the desert
    than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.

And the pen of Solomon should know.  This guy went a bit left of center by housing seven hundred wives and three hundred sort-of wives.  The estrogen flowed freely in Jerusalem…

I read somewhere that, “when it comes to marriage, God is more concerned about making us holy than He is about making us happy.”  That’s a massive departure from our cultural view of marriage.  Not that our happiness isn’t important to Him, but it’s not the main thing.  Even in marriage.

In the Christian worldview, marriage is a God-thing.  Actually, relationship in general is a God-thing, like music, art, beauty.  We messed it up.  Jesus came to redeem it, sort it out, restore it.  Restore us.  Like anything of value, this is a process worthy of our intentionality and our persistence. 

But this little post isn’t about marriage, per se.  God uses marriage throughout the Bible to liken His relationship to His people, first Israel, then to the Church.  We are called “the bride of Christ” and He is likened to our “bridegroom”.   

So, I wonder how it makes Jesus, the groom, feel when His bride argues with Him, complains and grumbles when we don’t get our way, despises His provision because it didn’t come how/when/where we wanted it.  The we also quarrel with each other, gossip, cause fractures in relationship. 

No wonder some of the old-time monks preferred the desert.

This passage from Solomon’s book obviously applies to husbands as well, but more importantly it has important repercussions to how we, the Church, treat Jesus and each other. 

Besides, no one likes living alone in a corner of the house.

Proverbs 21:9,19 Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.