LOVE IS A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION

“Walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…”  (Ephesians 5:2)

We often think, at least unconsciously, that when we finally fall in love and decide to share our lives with another person, everything in our lives will fall into place. We'll "settle down," as we say, and, the implication is, we'll stay settled until "death do us part."

I call this the Shoe Box Notion of love. In this view, a relationship is like a shoe box… in which you keep something precious like your wedding bouquet. You wrap the flowers in tissue paper, put them in the box, … and hope the contents will stay just as they are forever and a day.

Unfortunately, this is precisely how many of us think about relationships. We put our love in a shoe box, stash it, and imagine we can retrieve it unchanged anytime we want. We think we don't have to do anything to make sure it doesn't get moldy or moth-eaten.

In truth, however, a relationship is a journey and not a destination. It begins with a love that captures our attention and ignites our passion, and goes through the innumerable and unending undulations and permutations that give it texture, character, and spice, and which, without our necessarily liking or expecting it, shape and reshape the two people who created it…

A relationship is about movement, growth; it is a holy interpersonal environment for the transformation of two souls.

-- Daphne Rose Kingma in “True Love”

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NO PEDESTALS – Part 2

The Bible is remarkably transparent about the flaws and brokenness of the marriages of every character – yet how often in churches do couples sit in silent agony? They have an image of spiritual success to project, but under the surface the reality is that they have not slept together for months. Or there is verbal or physical abuse going on. Or they have a young daughter who is pregnant and they don’t know what to do. Or one of them is a secret alcoholic. Or they are facing bankruptcy.

Often the people who need help the most receive it the least, because that would mean leaving the pedestal. But what if real people could be as honest as the Bible about marriage? In a community gathered around a cross, there is no room for pedestals. In the Bible, marriage is not the fulfillment of our dreams; it is a place where we learn.

-- John Ortberg in “The Me I Want to Be”

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