Marriage

When I was about four or five years old I believed that my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world It was easy to believe, as our father told us four girls and one boy, that this was the case. Whenever Dad heard us stalking about someone being “pretty”, we heard, “Your mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

One day my oldest sister told me about a contest that would be held in Atlantic City for the most beautiful woman in America. She would be crowned “Miss America”. This news troubled me so much that I looked for an opportunity to find y mother alone, and my chance came when she was standing by the kitchen sink before anyone had been called to breakfast.

I asked her, “When do you have to go to be Miss America?” “What?” she said. I repeated the question. She turned to me and said, “I’m not going to be Miss America. Even if I wanted to be Miss America, I couldn’t . I’m a married woman. I’m married to your father and to you kids.”

I said “Oh”, and walked out the back door, across the back porch, down the steps and across the back yard when a feeling of euphoria came over me. The most beautiful woman in the world lived in my house and was my mother, and she could never leave because she was married. What joy!

Childish as this story is, I believe that every christian has a similar but different experience. We all believe that our God is the only source of good, all beautiful, all gracious, all powerful, and all knowing. But every Christian also has times when he or she cannot believe that God could possibly be concerned with the minutia of their personal lives. Surely the larger world is the place where God acts and lives, not my sandbox or garden.

The Bible answers this the same way my mother answered me: “I cannot leave you, for I am married to you! That ladder that Jacob saw reaching to heaven (Genesis 28), was, in fact, a wedding ring. The stone tablets Moses brought down from the mountain containing the ten Commandments were really a wedding ring, (Exodus 34), and the rock that was rolled across the tomb in Jerusalem was a wedding ring engraved with the blood of Christ. (Luke 15)

Both Testaments remind us of God’s enduring, committed love for His people , and declare”His love endures forever.” (psalm 136), and “Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Love in Him, Prue