October 2015

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"Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever."
Psalm 73: 25 - 26


Currently

            "I can't believe this!" my son-in-law said last week, shaking his head at the form in front of him. My youngest daughter, his wife, was in labor and we were in her hospital room watching her work because, let's face it, other than prayer and a few words of encouragement now and then, there's not much else observers can do. Her husband was filling out the pages-long form for the birth certificate. He showed me the form, pointing to the section about the parents' marital status with his pen. As you might imagine, there were several options: Never Married, Divorced, Legally Separated, and others I can't recall. The option that had caught his attention was, Currently Married, the only option for parents married to each other at the time of their child's birth.

            "Currently married?" he asked. "Currently? As if now every marriage is only temporary? That's just wrong," he said, and crossed out the word "Currently" in heavy black ink, leaving the word "Married" to stand boldly alone without its offensive modifier.

            He couldn't have given his laboring wife (or her mother) any better gift than this statement of commitment.

            Throughout the Bible the covenant of marriage is spoken of as a model for even greater things. In the Old(est) Testament, God's relationship with the nation of Israel is compared with marriage:

Never again will you [Jerusalem] be called "The Forsaken City" or "The Desolate Land." Your new name will be "The City of God's Delight" and "The Bride of God," for the Lord delights in you and will claim you as his bride. Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. Isaiah 62: 4 - 5

I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding or a bride with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10

            In the New(est) Testament, marriage is used to illustrate Christ's relationship with his Bride, the Church:

As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. Ephesians 5:31 -32

[Paul speaking to the church at Corinth] For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. II Corinthians 11:2

            Am I saying that divorce is never necessary? No, I am not. Ongoing, unrepentant abuse in its many forms should not be tolerated. But this isn't about divorce. It's about marriage, and the commitment of a covenant relationship.

            This week, students on the Umpqua College campus in Roseburg, Oregon were murdered if they answered "Yes," to a gunman's question. Witnesses say that the shooter asked each victim if he or she was a Christian. If the answer was "Yes," then he or she was shot in the head. If the answer was "No," the shots were fired into the victim's legs.

            So, here's my question, for myself and for you: What kind of Christians are we—Currently Christians or Committed Christians? If faced with a gunman, would we demonstrate the kind of commitment my son-in-law demonstrated in that hospital room with his laboring wife? Would we cross out "Currently" and let "Christian" stand alone? Knowing that we don't receive the grace to meet challenges until we face them, I pray that, in a moment like that, my answer and yours would be a bold, "Yes!"

 

Daye Phillippo

October 2015