“When To Watch Over Our Marriage”

I do read other blogs, especially those Christian/Bible based. Time Warp Wife is one I’ve enjoyed, and last week I received an e-mail about this particular post. Yes, I did enjoy reading it – but I think a couple can start much earlier watching over their marriage. I think it should begin while they are still in high school.

We taught lessons to our Junior High Girls Sunday School class about keeping themselves pure for their husband. We taught them to begin then praying for that young man while he’s on his way to meeting them.

People should not marry in a vacuum – they need to know the person well enough to make a lifetime commitment. Those marriages are not confined to previous generations, either. Divorce has been around since Moses’ time (at least!) Pharisees asked Jesus one of those trick questions about divorce:

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? (Matthew 19:3)

Being priests, they had studied the scriptures intensely. Being human, they had found what they considered loopholes, just as intensely. Jesus knew what they did:

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:4-6)

Thinking they had backed Him into a corner of contradiction (people still do this) they asked another question:

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? (Matthew 19:7)

Didn’t work:

He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. (Matthew 19:8)

How do hearts get so hard that a loved one is put away? By being outside God’s will. Israel, after being in the promised land, kept asking for a king – so they could be like the other tribes around them. That was not God’s will, but He allowed them to have a king, just as He allowed divorce. What good came from it? What blessing were missed by not following God’s will?

The concept of the lifetime commitment of marriage – two becoming one flesh, inseparable – has been under attack since the serpent in Eden. We’ve seen marriages last. We know why those do – husband and wife work together for the best interests of both. Ask any of them after a half century – was it worth it?

Ask those questions before marriage. Ask them before dating, before courtship, before setting yourself up for divorce. Ask them before telling someone “I love you” when only committing for today, not “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

The promise is not only to the one standing next to us – it is to the witnesses and to our Lord. Plan on keeping it, then work on keeping it.