And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. [Ephesians 5:21 (NLT)]
While being in lockdown for months may have given some couples a chance to reconnect, that connection wasn’t welcomed by all. Once their mandatory 10-week lockdown was lifted, Italian lawyers reported a 30% surge in couples starting divorce proceedings and both China and Saudi Arabia showed a similar rise when couples emerged from quarantine. For some couples, 24/7 togetherness for weeks on end exacerbated typical martial issues like money, housework, drinking, child care, screen and phone time, and dirty dishes in the sink. With the additional stressors of homeschooling, job loss or working at home, apprehension about the future, and trying to navigate safely in a COVID-19 world, even the best marriages have been tested.
We may have married our spouses for better and worse, in sickness and health, but none of us expected this much togetherness for such an extended time. Before we complain, let’s remember our friends who live alone. With the exception of the pizza delivery man or the cashier behind a plastic shield at Walgreen’s, their contact with the outside world has been from a 6-foot distance. FaceTime or Zoom replaced visits from friends and family and it’s been months since they’ve gotten hugs from anyone. Their isolation puts our petty spousal complaints in perspective!
There always will be disputes in any relationship but, in a good relationship, both parties understand the importance of negotiation and concession. Unfortunately, we live in an increasingly polarized society and the world’s divisiveness seems to have crept into our homes. Lines get drawn in indelible marker (or even cement) and people often think of compromise, trade-offs, finding the middle ground and deference as signs of weakness.
Today, my husband and I celebrate our anniversary. Rather than the traditional romantic dinner, weekend getaway, or family party, we’ll celebrate with a Chicago-style pizza our children sent us and a feel good movie on Netflix. The one tradition we’ll keep, however, is reading 1 Corinthians 13: the same words that were read at our wedding 53 years ago. Paul wasn’t writing about romantic or eros love. As delightful as romantic love is, that’s not what gets people through cancer, job loss, financial worry, Parkinson’s, a disabled spouse, an addicted child, or months of sheltering in place. Paul was writing of agape love—sacrificial unconditional love: the kind of love that carries people through pandemics (and decades of marriage)!
We’re often told to assert ourselves. What if, instead of asserting ourselves, we asserted our love? What if we remembered (and followed) Paul’s words: “love does not demand its own way.” Our love for one another is far more important than almost anything about which we disagree. When faced with disputes, let’s allow love and God to be our guides.
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. [Leo Tolstoy]
In an article about how our post-pandemic new normal will evolve, the author suggested a process for businesses to identify what needs changing in their post COVID-19 world. As a way of illustrating their method, there was an aerial photograph of a college campus quad. Before designing the walkways for this large green area surrounded on four sides by university buildings, the landscape architects simply sodded the field and observed how the students used the grassy expanse. After a while, the beaten down grass indicated the students’ preferred traffic patterns and it was on those favored paths that they finally placed paved walkways. At first glance, the asymmetric sidewalks seemed random but, once the process was explained, the strange arrangement of paths made sense. It was easy to see how they accommodated people’s tendency to take shortcuts and cut across corners.
Although God passed along some very detailed commands, the people of Israel frequently refused to obey them and, in Judges 17-18, we see what happens when people do whatever seems right in their own eyes. After stealing 1,100 pieces of silver from his mother, Micah hears her curse the thief. Fearful of her curse, he confesses and returns the money. After blessing Micah to remove the curse, his mother dedicates the money to the Lord. In honor of her thieving son, however, she gives 200 of those coins to a silversmith for the fashioning of an image (a figure carved from wood overlaid with silver) and an idol (a figure cast from molten silver). Micah then sets up a shrine for the prohibited items, adds some household idols of his own, makes an ephod (a priestly garment), and installs his son as his own personal priest. This was wrong in so many ways: not only were people expressly forbidden from making either carved images or molten idols but only a Levite could serve as a priest!
Unlike some laws, the Ten Commandments actually were set in stone; nevertheless, in a 2010 article in Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens posited that they were just a work in progress and badly needed a rewrite. Hitchens, who called himself an anti-theist rather than an atheist, had no use for the first three commandments. Getting out his hammer and chisel, he proposed getting rid of them altogether, revising others and adding a few more. While I didn’t agree with Hitchens’ misleading arguments, they caused me to consider the relevance of these laws that were given to an ancient nomadic tribe some 3,500 years ago.
Yesterday I told about a friend who was reading her Bible in a coffee shop when a young Jewish man belittled her belief in God. Admitting that he once believed, he explained he no longer did because the Torah had too many laws. My friend was pleased when the Holy Spirit provided her with this simple response: “Try the New Testament; there are only two laws in it!”
Protestant reformers summarized the essentials of the Christian faith in five short statements, the first of which is “Scripture alone” (Sola Scriptura) which means the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) is the sole, definitive, dependable, and essential authority for our faith and practice. While the Bible is not the only place we’ll find truth, the concept of “Scripture alone” means that everything else we learn about God must be interpreted in light of Scripture. When it comes to theology, if an idea doesn’t stand up to the Bible it hasn’t passed the acid test of truth.
Devotions of the Heart 