We have a swimming pool inherited from the former owners of this house. Two Mallard ducks, a male and a female, come at the equinox, apparently on their way north or south. They stay a few days; and we know them because of their personality. They remember us from year to year—no other Mallard ducks in the world would know us like that. This has now been for some years.
What impresses me is their fidelity to each other. They have mated for life! The male has the brightest colored feathers and he is a bit larger. And he acts the part of a gentleman: when I throw them scraps of whole wheat bread (which they seem to like immensely), he will step aside and let her have first chance to get it. (Maybe she is producing some eggs and needs extra nourishment, which he seems to discern.)
The Lord created us to love each other in holy matrimony and in fidelity. Peter says we are “heirs together of the grace of life,” a beautiful little phrase (1 Peter 3:7). Our Mallard duck “husband” seems to appreciate the spirit of that kind of fidelity or deference to his mate.
I am not embarrassed to say that I believe it was the infinite creation of God that made these two Mallards to be like they are; now He has created us like we are, also. But we are free moral agents, and we can make our home a heaven on earth or a hell on earth; we need a “Savior of Our Homes,” a divine Repairer of the cracks in the lute of our marriages.
The problem that’s at the bottom of every marriage failure is what Jesus describes as “present truth” in Matthew 24:12—“the love of many shall wax cold.” It has! The word for “love” is agape, but we are not to think it’s an idea hopelessly out of reach in the stratosphere of theology: Paul uses the word agape to describe physical sexual love of husband and wife (Eph. 5:25). Husband the seeking lover, wife the responding lover.
Face the truth: the Creator, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, created us male and female, created sexual love. There have been love songs that are pure and holy; but many youth today have never heard one pure and holy love song.
My little duck friends make some kind of pleasant sounds that must be their love songs to each other. Love is never pure, holy, happy, or forever, until it is returned to the world’s Savior, from whom it was first given. Our first father Adam wouldn’t do that—he idolized his love for Eve. Love is a most precious gift; you don’t originate it. You’ll never have it forever until you consecrate it back to its Giver, the Man of the cross, in gratitude.
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