Marriage
My December issue of Christianity Today offered to share the dust bunnies that the November issue had acquired.
In one of those moments, you know the ones. Where something or someone moves your heart to do something seemingly inconsequential? I know you understand what I mean. It is like “Why do that? It won’t make that big of a difference in my day.” I was inspired? I think so, now.
I only get the issues of CT because of a free 3-month trial. The price of a magazine subscription is not something we can handle in this season we find ourselves in. However, you know as well as I do that “free” is a great price.
I just thought that they would make good reading during those times I did not feel like reading any thing else.
I never once imagined that in my Free issue there would be a pearl. Something so valuable that even Bill Gates could not afford it.
This morning, rising early and not really in the frame of mind for reading that was “heavy” or thought provoking. You know those “I just want something to read that won’t shock me beyond my caffeine level” kind of mornings.
I dismissed the November dust bunnies from their outpost on December and began to read.
David Neff has written a wonderful review on the new movie “The Nativity Story” and it proved to be a wonderful compliment to my morning coffee, I was enjoying his insights.
Nothing abrupt, no scathing indictments about the invasion of the secular into the spiritual, but a sweet and obviously heartfelt view of the movie and the characters in it; smooth, yeah, that’s the word.
Nothing to compete with my French roast.
Then, I saw it. As I said, it was one of those moments. I SAW it and it was not in a word Mr. Neff had to say.
Joseph, the man.
The swelling of his beloved betrothed, Mary, alerted him to the obvious. There had to have been a relationship she had that he knew little or nothing about. There was another that his fiancée had given herself to; that she had bared not only her soul, but her entire being.
The bible tells you and me that he was a “just man” and had thought about “putting her away secretly” or in other words, he entertained the idea of “kicking her to the curb”. He painfully thought of divorce as the only real answer to the social and spiritual dilemma he was in. Or so it seemed.
Instead, as Mr. Neff graciously states, Joseph instead chooses to “share her shame”.
This phrase outran my morning coffee. As I realized that I have a Joseph too.
This May my wife and I will observe our 9th anniversary.
There have been those times that I’ve been swollen from another relationship. Times I’ve been pregnant with pride. So full of myself; puffed up, as the King James version says it.
There has been something growing deep inside me that lead my wife to believe that I have given myself to another.
A relationship that she knows very little about; after all, how does one explain their relationship with the Lord to another?
From all outward appearances, it would seem that I have not been involved with Jesus and my betrothed is justified in her perception. That is, I understand how she would think that way.
My condition either confounds or mystifies her. I would like to be able to say that more often than not she has been mystified; that is, she has been in awe of Him growing in me. This has not always been the case.
My Joseph, I call her Ginny, has walked with me as I stumble and rather than take the advice of others, instead she has chosen to “share my shame” but it is not without precedent.
She has taken to heart the words of Paul where he says “how I travail in prayer until Christ be formed in you.”
I’m the one that’s pregnant, but she’s the one travailing.
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Well written! Not many Christians would walk with someone in their shame. That's is love in all it's splendor. Thanks for sharing that with us. God bless, Randall