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Is Your Marriage Extraordinary?
By Becky Hunter, October 15, 2007
I hope you are doing well. And I hope your marriage is extraordinary.
In the last few months I have learned of several clergy couples who are divorcing. Their struggles make me sad. God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) and even from my quite limited observation it is easy to see why. The devastation left in its wake…well, we’ve all seen it. You know what I’m talking about. But when a pastor and wife divorce, their immediate family is not the only group significantly impacted…church members question, “If they can’t make it work, who can?”
My husband and I married in 1972. I love Joel and have since the day we met. Our wedding vows were ones of Christian tradition and included the phrases, “love, honor and cherish” and “till death us do part.” I think those vows hold within them such blessing. They imply that we each commit to do our best to conform to marriage. There is both challenge and comfort in the daily accountability to an ideal of marriage that is outside of us and bigger than we are.
It long has been popular, though, for a couple to make up their own wedding vows. Such vows are not an external reality, like gravity, but instead are quite subjective, deriving meaning solely from the individuals who create them. A reality in which the marriage is larger than the couple is replaced by a reality in which the couple is larger than the marriage.
Inherent in these two approaches are opposite views of marriage. Let me encourage you, whether or not you wrote your own vows, wherever you are in your marriage right now to look to God’s measure of marriage. It will be a blessing to everyone, including you!
I’m praying for you, as I always do. May you be filled with joy as you serve Jesus alongside your husband.
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