“Marriage
doesn’t create problems. It reveals them. You bring unresolved stuff into it.”
~Rick Warren
Another way of putting it:
The
institution of marriage,
Is one we shouldn’t
disparage,
The
concept we cannot really blame,
Instead
it’s our stuff,
That makes
things rough,
That, not marriage, is our shame.
In some ways it can be taken that
God has a sense of humour when he puts two seemingly similar people together in
marriage, by their collective will. They, of course, discover that they are
much more dissimilar than they thought they were under the intense scrutiny of
marital conditions.
It can be seen that marriage is an
institution of discipleship, for we don’t verily grow unless we are placed in a
seedbed of suffering or in social settings. And marriage is the ultimate social setting designed to
highlight problems we ordinarily would shun the knowledge of.
If the problems are dealt with,
the couple grows—individually and, possibly, collectively. But if the selfish
contains continue no one grows and the marriage is forever fragile, throbbing
in dynamics of resentment, and potent for damaging lives.
The Real Pride Of Marriage – Growth
There isn’t much sense in
celebrating silver and gold and diamond anniversaries if the marriage hasn’t
been a beacon for unity and selflessness. Under the marriage sits a family,
presumably, and all of that family are products
of the marriage.
The unresolved problems of the
couple’s marriage do indefinitely ripple through the lives of succession. What
might be believed to be containable within the family home never is. Those
problems that surface in secret are always revealed, eventually, in plain and
public daylight. The biggest pity is these problems live within people.
God has a purpose in marriage: for
the fulfilment of love and the honouring of truth.
Manifesting Love And Upholding Truth
The successful married couple has
not decades in the bank so much, but a habit of manifesting love throughout
their relationship, which burgeons through their lives, and a testimony for
upholding truth.
They are ruled by love and truth.
Love and truth are bigger than them individually and collectively. They are
prepared to fight for love and truth—which is never a fight of aggression—because
they know the short-term pain of growth provides a long-term gain of prosperity.
Successful married couples
understand what brokenness they bring into their marriages. And they are
compelled to identify and account for their respective problems.
***
When love and truth abide, marriage
is a beacon for life. Problems are part of the equation in testing love and
revealing truth. Problems, therefore, are to be celebrated as opportunities.
Problems are God’s stimuli for growth.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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