Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. [1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (ESV)]
I was married fifty-seven years ago today. When I promised to love, comfort, honor, cherish, forsake all others, and to have and to hold my husband “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” until we parted at death, I had no idea just how bad “for worse” could get, how little money “for poorer” might be, or that sickness could mean much more than a case of the flu. I certainly never pictured us growing old with wrinkles, white hair, hearing aids, bifocals, arthritis, and the limitations that come advanced years.
My husband and I had known each other for less than a year when we made our vows. Although we took them seriously and sincerely meant every word we said, at 20 and 24, neither of us had any inkling of the challenges that would accompany parenthood or how difficult it can be to cherish someone whose words or actions hurt us or with whom we disagree. With 43% of all first marriages ending in divorce, we’re not the only ones who entered into marriage so naively. Since 60% of second marriages fail and 73% of third ones do, some people never learn!
Like many couples, we had 1 Corinthians 13 read during the ceremony. Paul, however, wasn’t writing to young lovers or for a wedding—he was writing to the church in Corinth. The word he used for love wasn’t eros, the Greek word for romantic or sexual love, nor was it philia, meaning brotherly love, or storge, meaning familial love. It was agape and describes the kind of love that comes from God (who is love) and the kind of love believers are to have for all their fellow travelers on this planet. Agape is an unconditional love that doesn’t depend on appearance, physical attraction, or emotions. Unlike eros, agape isn’t something we fall into or out of. Agape is more than a feeling; it is a deliberate choice (and one that must be made daily if any marriage is to survive)!
Although Paul was addressing his words to the church and specifically speaking about the necessity of love when using spiritual gifts, his description of agape love holds true in marriage, as well. In the decades since our wedding, we’ve experienced good and not so good times. There have been periods of plenty and sparseness, illness and well-being, tragedy and joy, fullness and emptiness, anger and forgiveness, excitement and tedium, labor and leisure, vulnerability and security, loss and gain, turmoil and peace, discontent and satisfaction. Although eros brought us together, eros alone couldn’t have gotten us through those times. Only agape love could have kept us together all these decades.
Agape mirrors the love God showed us on Calvary and, by the grace of God, our marriage survives because of agape! While Jesus’ sacrifice saved mankind, the sacrifices made in marriage save the unity of the relationship! The unrestricted, unrestrained, unselfish, and sacrificial love of agape is a conscious choice. None of us are loveable all of the time; we can, however, choose to be loving all of the time!
The love that is affirmed at a wedding is not just a condition of the heart but an act of the will, and the promise that love makes is to will the other’s good even at the expense sometimes of its own good—and that is quite a promise. … A marriage made in heaven is one where they become more richly themselves together than the chances are either of them could ever have managed to become alone. [Frederick Buechner]
Although three places in Scripture tell us that the Lord proclaimed ten commandments and wrote them on stone tablets, those tablets weren’t numbered (especially not with Roman numerals)! The original languages of the Bible (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) didn’t contain punctuation and the earliest manuscripts didn’t even have spaces between the words. While the words in Scripture are God-breathed, the punctuation was at the discretion of later copyists and translators. Without numbering, punctuation, or paragraphs, we can’t know for sure where one commandment ends and the other begins. As a result, while Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians all observe the Ten Commandments, their commandments are not all the same!
While reading about David and Goliath, I realized that it’s not just our seniors who can be undervalued or overlooked. It’s as wrong to disregard the youth in our midst as it is to discount the old. Likewise, just as some seniors may underestimate their gifts, the same could be said for those who still count the years rather than the decades! Age is just a number to God—He’s more interested in willing hearts than number of years!
Some believers insist that unicorns actually existed because they are mentioned nine times in the Old Testament. Claiming the Bible is completely without error, they insist that you must believe the same thing—including the unicorns! On the other hand, some people disparage believers and discount all of Scripture because of those same unicorns! Do we blindly believe or do we “throw out the baby with the bathwater” because of one word?
Described as a “preaching genius…like no other preacher you have ever heard,” the late Rev. Fred Craddock was well-known for including stories in his sermons. He told one that took place during the early 60s in a diner in the deep South. Although the white Craddock sat in a booth and was served with courtesy and consideration, he silently watched the diner’s manager treat a Black man at the counter with rudeness, disdain, and open contempt. Although offended by the man’s racist behavior, Craddock remained silent. It was when he walked out of the diner after finishing his meal that the preacher heard a rooster crow. A signal of his betrayal, the crowing told the preacher that, by ignoring one of the “least of these”, he’d ignored Jesus! His silence was as much a betrayal of the Lord as were Peter’s denials!
When I learned about people like Abraham, David, Moses, and Samson as a girl, they were the Bible’s version of super-heroes like Batman or Superman. The Bible’s heroes were larger than life, obedient, invincible, and seemed to overcome their obstacles effortlessly. Appearing perfect in their faith and actions, they weren’t people to whom I could relate. In reality, they were as flawed as the rest of us but, for the most part, their imperfections and failures were redacted from the stories we learned in Sunday school.
Devotions of the Heart 