03.03.13
Mark 10.7-9 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and
mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So
they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together,
let not man separate.” (ESV)
Recently, I read a blog where the writer discussed the
will of God and what we seem (generally) to think it’s like to surrender to God’s
will: like it is something totally scary; like God is going to make us do
something that is going to be excruciatingly painful or humiliating. Now in
fairness to the writer, she wasn’t saying God is some Cosmic Kill-joy; but she
was addressing the notion that some people seem to think the only way we can
draw closer to God is through pain of some sort – and with God, the more the
better.
I admit I’ve been tempted to think that: the more I pain, the more I gain. I’ve been tempted
to think that pain gets me more Brownie points. I’ve been tempted to think that
the only way I’m going to address the bad things in my life is through some
sort of circumstance that is excruciatingly painful or humiliatingly humiliating.
That simply isn’t true.
It is true that the circumstances of life, while
sometimes painful or humiliating, do have a tendency to get me to think of God
more; I’ll admit that. But the circumstances of life are not exclusive to the
believer – everybody has circumstances. Stuff happens. To everyone.
My thoughts about God are somehow balanced or righted
when I think about Marriage and what
Jesus said about marriage that day to some Pharisees who seemed to want Jesus
to give them a hall-pass on their relationships with their women. Jesus, tell us, is divorce okay or not!?
Divorce is something many of us are familiar with in the
west because, as stuff happens, so does divorce. Divorce is prevalent in modern
society. Divorce happens. But why does divorce happen? Jillions of reasons I
suppose but the bottom line is this: God never divorces. He may let people go
and have their own way, but in His heart, His promises (and His love) always stand.
When I think of my relationship with God in the context of a marriage I understand it
somewhat better; well, differently. Our relationship just seems to think out better when I consider it that
way. It is a way of committing that goes beyond living together. It’s making
and keeping a promise with God. It’s accepting and keeping His promise for me.
It’s all about continually infatuated-love, safe-surrender
and self-less mutuality, and separation never comes into the picture. Why would
it if the couple is happy? Marrying God is a win/win because the hurtful or
humiliating part is never done. God understands us in a way that far surpasses
our understanding of Him. And God chooses us; it’s not the other way around.
Human marriage is a picture of that and should be
approached with love and steadfastness as the goal, not whether one hurts or
humiliates the other; being married to God, means (to me) to be cared for perfectly forever. Being married to God
means that He is more precious to me than anyone or anything else. He’ll never
divorce me and I’m foolish to entertain thoughts of divorcing Him…
No comments:
Post a Comment