By David ReayFriday 6 Nov 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth. (NLT)
One of the great poets said that “for one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” You won’t find many courting couples expressing such sentiments.
In courtship we seek out and adore gods and goddesses, and yet ending by marrying mere mortals. A courtship might be a wonderful prologue, but the main thing is the play. We may spend lots of time and energy and even money on a wedding and end up forgetting that a wedding is an event, a marriage is an ongoing process. If we think arranging a wedding is hard work, we need to recognise sustaining a marriage is a lot harder.
That might sound cynical: a bucket of cold water poured over courtship and romantic love. Not at all. As our text reminds us, marriage partners can find joy in one another. We can, incidentally, safely assume wives can rejoice in the husbands of their youth! It is just that love doesn’t come easily or even naturally. We are incurably egotistic and it requires God enabled effort to come to love another human being, not just love what they do for us.
We can only truly rejoice in our marriage partners if we resolve to truly love them with the help of a God who embodies and empowers love. Our partners change and life throws a fair bit at us. So too will love go through seasons and hardships. But real love survives the cold winters as well as the warm summers. The love that keeps a relationship going is a love for all seasons.
Blessings
David