Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
In case anybody is wondering, "Does married love get better the older you become?" the answer is YES, it gets more precious as time goes by. Gradually the truth begins to penetrate one's selfish soul to realize: the loving devotion of your spouse is something you don't deserve. A wise author said it a century ago: "Love is a precious gift which we receive from Jesus." It may take one a lifetime to see it's true; but the sooner you believe it, the happier you will always be.
But suppose everything has gone wrong. You never expected the horror of divorce. It has crushed you. There's no human pain quite so bitter as to be hated by the one whom you loved more than anyone else in the world. It's like suffering an amputation; despised and forsaken you hobble emotionally on one leg. (Amputees tell us they have nerves that say the limb is still there when it isn't.) You may be tempted to resent anything a happily married person might say ("what right do you have to talk, you've never been through this!"). But listen:
(1) No one on planet earth deserves love. It comes from Christ--a gift to be received.
(2) Calvinism is wrong when it says God "elects" some to be saved and abandons others to be lost, but it's also wrong to think God arbitrarily gives some people happiness and denies it to others.
(3) And it's also wrong to think (and this is a common misconception) that love depends on hard work. Plenty of men have never missed a beat taking out the garbage, yet the wife has abandoned them; and there are faithful homemakers whose husbands have walked off. If salvation is not by "works," neither is "married happiness by works." It's also by faith in Jesus. (Yes,--that's true!)
(4) Let's assume that all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put Humpty Dumpty together again; you say God can't either (you may still be wrong if only you knew). "Life has been terribly unfair" (and it's true); but don't despise fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. John the Baptist had done everything right and yet Herod locked him in a dungeon, until the executioner ended it all. It was so unfair! And Jesus, only a few miles away having a great time out in the sunshine, didn't come personally to visit him (the story is in Matthew 11:2-14; 14:1-13). But Jesus was with him through the Holy Spirit in that dark dungeon.
(5) John was comforted with His companionship and that of angels. And he became a source of encouragement for millions ever since. Life does not end when you're "despised and rejected of men" ... (or of women!). You still have the Savior through His Holy Spirit. And that's real life.
(6) If you're one of the few who has married bliss--be humble about it and thank Him.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 7, 2004.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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