Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.”
GENESIS 2:18
Marriage has long provided fodder for jokes and one-liners, and a search on the Internet will quickly lead you to a seemingly endless supply of them:1
“I’ve had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn’t.”—Patrick Murray
“My wife and I were happy for 20 years . . . then we met.” —Rodney Dangerfield
“Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing . . . she goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”—Henry Youngman
“A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.”—Zsa Zsa Gabor (married to 9 different men that she “finished”)
“Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.” —Ms Magazine
“Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.”—Mae West
I have never considered divorce . . . murder sometimes, but never divorce.”—Joyce Brothers
Do you note a theme of cynicism here? It seems that most marriage jokes develop from the assumption that once you get married, everything good in the relationship will wither and die.
In fact, it’s difficult to find a joke about marriage that’s not cynical. But here’s one:
A husband had a heart attack, and when he and his wife reached the hospital, he was immediately whisked away by the staff. Hours passed before the wife was allowed to see him.
When the wife finally saw her husband, she was dismayed to find him hooked up to elaborate machines that blipped, hissed and beeped. But she tiptoed toward his bed and, bending over him, whispered, “George, I’m here.” Then she kissed him. Suddenly there was a blippety-blip-blip from the equipment. “He was okay,” she later told a friend, “but after forty-seven years of marriage, it’s nice to know that I can still make his heart skip a beat when I kiss him.”
Now that’s a little better. That reflects the type of marriage you should look forward to—the type where your eyes twinkle and your heart flutters even after 47 years together.
At this stage of your life together, moving toward your wedding, you aren’t cynical about marriage. To you this relationship is a gift—a cause for joy and celebration. Your world is full of color. And that’s what God wanted when He created marriage.
If you look at the first two chapters of the Bible, you will find much more than an account of how God created the earth. You will also see that the first institution He created was marriage: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Genesis 2:18).
Many things can be said about marriage and its benefits for individuals and for a nation, but it really all boils down to one simple statement: God gave humankind the gift of marriage because it is not good for man to be alone.
God did not create you to be independent. He created you for interdependence. When He gives you a lover and companion in marriage, He gives you someone who will be your partner in everything you will encounter in life.
He gives you someone to multiply your joys and triumphs and who divides your sorrows and defeats.
He gives you a spouse who will help you grow and mature into the person God wants you to be.
And through the children you create, He gives you the opportunity to make an impact on generations to come.
It’s true that some of the passion you feel now toward each other will fade after a while (though, like a burning fire, you can stoke it regularly in ways that delight and surprise you). What you will find, as years go by, is that the fervor of new love will be replaced by something much deeper and much more satisfying.
Barbara and I have been married more than 40 years, and we’ve built a lifetime of memories and shared experiences as we’ve journeyed through life together. We’ve raised six children and are now seeing our family multiply with grandchildren, now numbering 19! We’ve worked through financial struggles and health crises. We’ve seen God work through us to help build a worldwide ministry to families. We’ve cried together through weddings and funerals. We’ve had our hearts broken by the choices of extended family members. And together we’ve reached out through our tears and sensed the comfort and victory of our Lord in times of deepest sorrow.
Through all that we have shared, we’ve developed a bond that is difficult to describe, except to say this: It is far, far better than anything we knew when we first married.
This is what we hope and pray you will experience in the coming years, because God gave you to each other so that you would not go through life alone, but with a soul partner for life.
Discuss Note
1. See, for example, http://quotations.about.com/od/relationships/a/marriage1.htm, or www.romwell.com/books/relation/marriage_quotes3.shtml.