Good marriages are made on earth

I don't think good marriages are made in heaven. That's because they don't marry in heaven.

Good marriages are made on earth. A man and a woman are put together, and then through the grindstone of life, through the potter's wheel of life, through the trek across life -- use whatever metaphor you wish -- a marriage is made on earth. It is shaped, it is hammered out ...

... it is seasoned and aged like a bottle of good wine. On earth.

And good wine takes time.

Recently I bought a bottle of Merlot from 2005 and that already cost a pretty penny (for my budget).

My marriage was bottled in 1978. And with Valerie's recent cancer, it's struck me just how absolutely irreplacable it is.

I also don't think there is love at first sight. There's something at first sight, but whatever it is, it's not love. Maybe in the better cases it is the beginnings of love, maybe the seedlings of love. But as with any seedling, you don't know what the mature glory will look like until much later.

Good marriages are like lost and found. You lose yourself. And you find something much better.

And that something much better is a small echo of Something Much Better.

And so a good marriage is like a little sounding box -- like the sounding box of a violin.

In it, you hear just a hint of the music of the spheres.

Logos2Go

Mark 12.25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

Ephesians 5.30-32 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.