Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Husband and Wife (08/08/14)
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TITLE: The Mystery of Marriage | Previous Challenge Entry
By Mary Sue Moss
08/12/14 -
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It has been fifty years but I can still feel my emotions of one particular summer evening in that car with my family. Ice cream cones are not frequently awarded, but this evening Dad pulls into the local dairy shop and announces that he’ll get the usual nine vanilla cones. From some brother or sister in the backseat comes a voice, “I want chocolate.”
With no anger in either his words or his spirit, Dad puts the Pontiac in reverse and we head home without our cones, neither chocolate nor vanilla. The frustration I remember is not at my dad but at my brother or sister who attempts to adjust the flavor selection. Mom accepts the decision and there is no, “But, Stan, they deserve ice cream. Don’t you think you’re being a little extreme?”
To this day I do not know whose voice it is that sends our family home without ice cream. Perhaps my sister has carried that knowledge to heaven with her at her death at age 53. It is an unsolved riddle.
Paul says in Ephesians 5:31-32 that a husband joined to his wife makes one flesh and that fact is a great mystery. Don’t try to explain or rationalize it, but it is wise to live it. It is an unfathomable fact and it is the world’s best-kept secret.
The mystery of my parents’ marriage has all the safety of a fastened seat belt without the feeling of constriction. Dad is in charge and Mom is the “yes” man. They act as a unit which is as close a picture to “one flesh” as I’ve ever seen. Nine children in the home is chaotic in itself, but the one relationship that has unity is between Dad and Mom.
The marriage mystery verses in Ephesians state that Christ and the church hold the same enigma as husband and wife. Christ is the authority without being an authoritarian; He’s the head to which the body reacts, because someone needs to be in charge. It is the best way to live a Christian life whether married or single.
If you are privileged to be a husband or wife, do it God’s way. Called to be sons and daughters of God and joint heirs with Christ? We all are... and that is what the Church is. Mystery solved.
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Unique object lesson should be a lesson to us in the church.
Jesus is driving the church toward heaven. Do we argue with Jesus about anything? We all lose out in the end.
I liked your story.
God bless~
It was also a great guide to a young parent such as me, mom and dad need to support each other in their decisions and moments of discipline.
This last bit is just something that struck me odd as reading was the bit about your sister. (Please take this as a writing critique and not a knock) I think there needs to be more of an explanation of how her death to achieve the effect i think you intended for it to have on the story. But that is just my opinion.
Excellent job. You brought memories of our seven children riding in our old Ford station wagon, no seat belts either.
One time a policeman stopped me for being all over road. After being kind enough to ask if there was something wrong with my steering wheel, or tires, he looked in the back and smiled. He let me go!
Fun memories that you were able to bring out with this great story.