Marriage

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Galatians 5:13, “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”

When the desire to swim oceans, climb mountains or crawl across burning desert sands to prove love have long since faded into childish memory, one aspect of true, biblical love will still be flowing in the heart of the one who loves. Paul uses this attribute of true love to encourage the Lord’s people who lived in Galatia, but the truth and necessity of a resurgence of this kind of love is sorely needed in our time.

The person who truly loves will be a servant to the person who is loved! This is true in the spiritual realm as well as in the physical realm. When men and women learn that the splendor of love is the serving, the giving of the self to the person loved, then and only then are most of the ‘battles’ of relationships won by the surrendering of selfishness, of the need to Lord it over the other person.

The Bible uses the servant nature of Christ as the exemplar, the model to be followed in the most sacred of human relationships, that of a man and woman living together in marriage. When we serve one another on the basis of love, that love that seeks the good of the one loved, even though at times the one loved cannot or will not return the love, we are loving in the manner Christ loves us.

That we live in a lawless age receives testimony each morning on the news. Those foolish souls who think that a ‘no rules’ marriage is the living end are wrong and the statistics prove it. The back page of this Issue of the Journal tells again of the love a man for his wife, a love that endured and bloomed in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. Trouble cannot break love, nor can weakness on the part of the other, only a lack of the love of Christ in your heart can permit a marriage, a love to be broken.

Dr. Charles Allen wrote; “Love never dies, but it can be killed.” Many a love has been killed by harsh, mean cutting words. The murder of love is too often accomplished through the thoughtless comparison to another with different looks or talents. And love will wither and curl up and expire in the valley of indifference. How many hearts are broken and the halls of the home ring with the sobs of children left in the wake of abandonment by a father who froze the little mother out of his world? Or the souls who worship their career to the detriment of the family. Scrooge is not the last man to lose his sweetheart because of his love for gold or fame.

Ernest Hemingway had the priest in Farewell To Arms, say to Frederic Henry, “When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.” What has happened to clergy who want to replace serving love with more of the gushy, fickle kind we see demonstrated each day by men and women who have the morals of alley cats and the compassion for children of an insane brood sow?

I don’t know very much about Buckminster Fuller, but I read of his utter devotion to his wife, Annie. Thomas Crum says that the last time he heard Bucky give a speech was in Washington, D.C. Though in his eighties Fuller held the audience spellbound. As Mr. Crum walked Mr. Fuller to his limo for the trip to the airport for a flight to New York to speak later that evening, Bucky said to him, “You know Annie’s not doing well. I’m very concerned about her.” Fuller had told several people that he had promised Annie that he would die before her, so that he could meet her ‘there.’ That evening he was told that Annie had slipped into a coma in Los Angeles. Bucky took the first flight he could get to LA and immediately going to Annie’s bedside, he sat down, held her hand, and quietly died.

I don’t think that we have the power to actually choose such a death, but the story does present a model of deep love, the kind of love that wants to in any way possible to make things easier for the one loved. How different from those poor souls who spend too much time scheming ways to put a heavier burden on the shoulders and heart of the one whom they say they love.

If the plan of God teaches us anything it most assuredly teaches us that true love has at its heart, duty to the one loved. Duty can be a cold, hard, hurtful word, but without a sense of the duty love demands, you are left with the mess of modern, Hollywood relationships that care nothing of lasting love that grows in depth and beauty. One of my favorite phrases from a so called love song is the phrase I heard as a boy. The man singing the song stated that he wanted “A little love that slowly grows and grows, not one that comes and goes.” A wise desire.

A preacher friend and I were talking on the phone and he lamented the ravages of age overwhelming his wife of long years. We mentioned another friend whose wife is suspected of the onset of Alzheimer’s. My own Great Blonde has some of the ravages of body you might expect after 40 some years of marriage. Actually she had to make a decision of rather to remain a blonde or give in to the insistence of silver. We both prefer her with golden hair. I would prefer any color or kind for me. And her knee. She complains about her knee. And she knows how to use a ‘bum’ knee to her advantage, after all a girl with a knee like hers cannot be expected to perform as she did when she was 30, which was not all that long ago. Ah, the wisdom of the Blonde.

It seems as only yesterday we were totally enthralled with each other and with the commitment to be with each other till death do us part. We did not enter into such a compact with dread, but with joy at the prospect of growing together over the years. It never dawned on us that this meant growing old together. Even now we keep such thoughts pushed to the very back of our mind.

And yet. And yet I find myself just watching as she, the girl I married in the long ago, now grown to a mature grandmother, who rejoices in the life God has given to us. She will often stop at Foxes Market on the way home and buy some special cut for me, and with the enthusiasm of a newly wed, prepare it and watch, with eagle eye to see if I really like it. I enjoy that way she goes about preparing whatever it is she is fixing. Over the years I have developed the knack of serving her in several ways. Paul taught that he that is married careth for the things of this life, how he may please his wife. Many is the man who should heed this advice from Paul.

When a man loves his wife he is at that point most like Christ. Ephesians makes this very plain and to think that true love is what the other person does for you is to entirely miss the point made throughout the scripture. Ephesians 5:25 is the acid test of the love a man has for his wife, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”
This truth is so easy to state.

I recall as a child the family that moved into our little community. They had worked on nights and weekends fashioning a tiny house out of wood from surplus saddle soap boxes. In the house they used wire from electric fences to string across the span and hang surplus Army blankets which were substitutes for walls. A Chunk Stove was the nearest thing to central heat, though I doubt that anyone in our neck of the woods have ever heard of central heat. This family consisted of the father, the wife and 5 children. As near as I can remember the wife was only about 21 years of age, so to say they started their family early is understatement.

I didn’t know the major difference between this family and other similar families until I was a grown man far removed from my roots. This family truly loved Jesus Christ and each other. They were always trying to make the burden a little lighter for the other. Many women in this little enclave of the dark ages were little more than white slaves and the children were used merely to abuse as a means of dealing with inner rage. I remember the man as every bit of 25, yet he worked every day at a saw mill, and often worked extra on farms. I do recall that he and family prayed together. I avoided them like the plague.

This family was so poor that were they to have reached what we call the poverty level they would have known God answered their prayers! Yet Christ was the difference. I think after all these years, He is still the difference. Our families desperately need Jesus! Larry Lilly

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