Musings on Marriage

Tag: Stories

Kings and People

When I was a little girl I went to Sunday School.  I loved learning about all the stories of the Bible, the heroes, and the amazing narratives – like Moses leading all those Israelis around in the wilderness, Abraham obeying God and moving far from home, David fighting the enemy Goliath, Jonah and the big fish, Peter, as he was always speaking good things – the people in the Bible always seemingly larger than life.

As I got older, I read the entire stories of these people, often surprised about how much they screwed up during their lives.  The versions I had been taught were sanitized, making the characters almost super-human.  Then I read the Bible for myself and found out a lot more about all these Bible characters, and they weren’t quite as squeaky clean as I had been taught.

 I learned that Moses had been a murderer and not wanting to do the job God gave him; Abraham lied, got his Egyptian servant pregnant at his wife Sarah’s request; David had way too many wives – and still had an affair with his friend’s wife, killing her husband as a coverup.  Jonah was racist and didn’t want to tell his enemies about God’s love so he took off in the opposite direction. 

Not one of those stories had stellar characters – they were all flawed and regular human beings.  But I found the real stories to be much more comforting than the sanitized versions, learning how incredibly patient God has been throughout thousands of years. 

This morning I was at the keyboard, playing for communion, when I heard the word Bittersweet in the song.  We’re singing about the goodness of God, along with the horrifying death our Savoir suffered. Why would He die for us weak and vile humans? 

The short answer is because He loves us, His creation.  It is absurd for anyone to die for the human race, considering all the atrocities we have committed, and yet He did.  Not only that, but he humbled Himself and came as a baby, living handicapped inside a human body for over three decades.

When I read about the life of Jesus in the Bible, He was perfect – so unlike every other character in the Book.  He was a King, yet He lived as a servant.  He has vast power above every king in history, yet He used his power only to cure the sick, heal the emotional scars of many, multiply food for thousands to eat, and calm some storms.  There is no other man in history who accomplished what He did during His short life. 

Glenn Packiam writes an insightful contrast between King Herod, (the reigning king at the time Jesus was born) and King Jesus:

“Herod clawed his way to power;

 Jesus emptied Himself of power.

Herod killed to protect his power;

Jesus died to save the powerless.

Herod’s reign results in weeping;

Jesus’ reign results in worship.”

Now, over 2,000 years later Herod is mostly forgotten but Jesus is still a household name.

My heart sings for joy at the marvelous story of Christmas, where the upside-down Kingdom reigns – where humble acts are mighty and compassion means strength.

Jesus came as a baby, but don’t let His size fool you.

Love & War

Dear Daughters,

            I had never noticed that the Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage.  In their book Love and War, John and Stasi Eldredge point out that the epic story of human history, spanning thousands of years, begins in Genesis with a garden and a couple.  As God unfolds the beautiful, frightening, mysterious story of His love, there is not some lone hero standing against the world, but a man and a woman – a marriage.

 In the book of Revelation, the end of the world as we know it – after a very long battle – there is finally a feast, a wedding feast.  The wedding here is between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.

            In a sense, marriage is the Kingdom of God.  It is meant to bring glory to God because God is love and where there is love, there is God. (Mother Teresa)  When we love each other in our marriages, forgive when there are offenses (and there will be offenses every day), sacrifice for one another, never give up hope, always persevere in the difficult times of life, we are modeling what the love of God is all about. 

            The bottom line story of the Bible is Love.  God loves us and He wants us to love one another.  Sounds simple, but as we both know, it’s not.  Why?  Because this beautiful love story is placed in the middle of a dreadful war.

            Think of all the fairy tales you love.  One of my favorites is The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, later made into a Disney movie.  If you remember, that love story is placed in the midst of a war as well.  Ursula, the sea witch, was doing everything she could to keep Ariel and the Prince from marrying, making a mockery of love.  In the end, the Prince and Ariel did marry but not without a battle of heroic proportions.

            Think of the famous girls and boys in other adventure stories you have read: Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy, being driven together by Aslan the Lion. Hansel and Gretel holding hands together for safety in the dark woods, Beauty and the Beast learning to love so they can both be free.  People all over the world love those stories.  Why?  Because we want to live stories like that as well. 

            The honeymoon of Adam and Eve barely started when the serpent successfully snaked in with a plan to break everyone’s heart.  His deceptive lie hissed, You can live without God and because that lie was embraced, there was broken fellowship between the humans and God.  It was the beginning of distrust, blaming, shaming, and betrayal.  Satan’s plan has not changed one iota since; he comes only to kill, steal and divide. 

            But in this, the world’s darkest moment, love shone through.  In spite of chronic unbelief on our part, God pledged to love and pursue us.  He did this through the great Prince, Son of the King, Jesus Christ.  Christianity is truly the most preeminent love story the world has ever known.

            This story is not over, it is still unfolding right now, even as you are reading.  The terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues.  At the core of this age-old struggle, there is one overarching question that is being raised: Can a kingdom of love prevail?  God vows that Love never fails, (1 Corinthians 13:8) but the world laughs and the devil laughs.  Sometimes we laugh too.  It sounds so naïve.  Love seems so weak when compared to all the evil around us.

            Your marriage is set in the midst of this story, the age-old beautiful story of God pursuing His people; it is a story of redemption, a story of love.  But that story is opposed, because we have an enemy who desires to see our marriages and families divided. His goal is to bring bitterness and strife.

            It seems that if we as married couples can’t find a great battle to fight together we’ll start one with each other.  For years I saw Dad as the enemy of our marriage.  He wouldn’t agree with me on how to raise you girls, on which movies to watch, how to discipline, decisions on spending money….and on and on.  So I fought with him, fighting for my opinion to win, my view to be the right view.  Not surprisingly, this did not improve our marriage. 

            Then God finally opened my eyes to see the spiritual battle that was going on, a battle that could only be fought effectively with prayer and love.  You know the verse, Love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you…?  Well, when I finally started doing what this verse says, a ray of hope sprang up in my heart.  I started trusting God to do His work, instead of me trying to change things.  And that is precisely when things started to change. 

            Oh, how I lament the years that I tried to do things in my own power, but God is so gracious.  He patiently waits for each of us to come to the point of giving up on ourselves and giving in to Him.  He never coerces, never pressures, but simply pursues and encourages us through his Spirit.

            We are prone to wander, forget, and go back to old patterns, but for that too God is patient, forgiving and filled with grace, always urging us to get up and try again. 

God loves you as you are, not as you should be. (Brennan Manning)

Love, Mom

Anxiety and the Old Testament

Dear Daughters,

I used to be embarrassed by the Old Testament.  With all the traumatic events mentioned during those thousands of years – murder, sexual exploitation, military invasions, natural disasters, political scandals, family dysfunction – I used to think it was all a bit too racy to be included in a holy book.  I remember pondering,

If I were God and wanted people to love and believe in me, I would have sanitized those stories, made them a bit more neat and tidy, kept out the ugliest sections…

Good thing I’m not God… 

Kim Baar

The older I get and the more time I spend reading the Old Testament, the more I’m amazed at how comforting it is to read about people who have lived through dreadful life stories and have come through with even greater trust in their Creator. 

Take Abraham and the promise God gave him when he was 75 years old – that he would become the father of many nations.  It finally happened when he was 100 – impatiently waiting for a promise that took 25 years to fulfill.  In the meantime, there was strife in the household as Abraham and his barren wife Sarah tried to help God out by having Abraham sleep with her maidservant and birth a child using their own wisdom.  Which, by the way, made a big mess out of the original plan.  Yet, as God always does, he brings good out of evil and his promises do come to pass – not a moment too soon or too late.

And then there’s Moses.  When God chose him to deliver His people from slavery in Egypt, he gave God every possible reason why he shouldn’t be the one.  He was not an orator, he was scared, nervous and tried to convince God to choose someone else.  Moses had murdered an Egyptian 40 years earlier and had extreme fear and trembling, unconvinced he was the one to lead a million people cross-country through the desert.  Yet, he reluctantly agreed.  God showed up when He said he would, working through Moses with his brother Aaron as his mouthpiece, and the rest is 40 years of desert history.

Remember Naomi, the widow who lost not only her husband but both sons to death within about ten years?  She asked others to call her Mara, meaning bitter, instead of Naomi, which means pleasant:

 The Strong one has dealt me a bitter blow.  I left here [Bethlehem] full of life and God has brought me back with nothing but the clothes on my back.  Why would you call me Naomi?  God certainly doesn’t. The Strong One ruined me.  Ruth 1:20

She was acrimonious toward God, resentful, and near hopeless.  Amazing to me, God allowed those words of hers to be recorded for millions of others to read.  Even though she had given up on God, He had not given up on her and had planned a good ending for the tragic story she was living.  When she returned to her home in Bethlehem along with her daughter-in-law Ruth, God provided a husband for Ruth, who in turn gave birth to a son – Naomi’s grandson – who ended up becoming an ancestor of King David and was named in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. 

God loved Naomi back to life again.  She was no longer bitter and empty, but became full and satisfied.  It took years of heartache, honesty, pain and a long obedience in the same direction, but she was healed of her grief. 

God isn’t afraid of letting it be known publicly that his people sometimes don’t trust him.  He’s not ashamed that he is perceived as harsh, unfair and demanding.  He lets us speak our emotions, even though they may not be the truth about who he is. Yet he humbly conceals Himself as he works all things together for good – to those who love him.  As CS Lewis writes:

We may ignore but we can in no way evade the presence of God. 

The world is crowded with him.

He walks everywhere incognito.

My friend Kara’s favorite story in the OT is about Samson.  Samson the womanizer, the royal screw-up, the proud and arrogant man who disobeyed God and lived a haughty and egotistical life.  Yet in the end he was humbled and God was able to do mighty things through him.

Samson is the last Biblical person I would admire, yet that story gave my friend great hope that even with all her failures and sin, God has and is still redeeming her life in amazing ways.  His mercies never fail, He never gives up on us.

Whenever we read Facebook or Instagram posts of seemingly perfect people and families, taken at a moment of peace and success, we seem to assume this is everyday normal for them.  The Old Testament, however, shows characters as real people – their struggles, weaknesses, failures and joys – and how God works through all of them to bring about good to those who will receive it.  For me, the stories remove anxiety because it’s not the people themselves who pose as heroes but are shown for who they are, as fallen humans in the hands of a merciful God.

Do not fear for I am with you;

Do not be dismayed for I am your God;

I will strengthen you and help you;

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. 

Isaiah 41:10

These stories give me great confidence.  When I see how God has worked through all those people of old, how He was never in a hurry, how He continued to forgive, how His love was and is so long-suffering and patient – it gives me hope.  It helps me to trust and believe that God is who he says he is, He keeps his promises.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

When I look at all the uncertainty of our age, the virus, the anger and divisions between people groups, the pandemic of fear and anxiety trying to infect us all – I stop and read these stories.  I read and re-read them, and it brings me peace.  This is not the first time the world has been a tough place to live and it won’t be the last – there is indeed nothing new under the sun. 

Take heart and know God cares about you, just like he has cared about all those people living thousands of years ago.  He has not forgotten you, he has not forgotten about us as His people. He’s working through all of us – together.

Give all your worries and cares to God,

for he cares about you. 

1 Peter 5:7

Love, Mom

I Wonder as I Wander

Dear Daughters,

Last night I was taking a short walk after dinner when the spring night was clear, crisp and cool.  It is not officially Spring according to the calendar but it certainly feels like it here in Idaho.  Typically I look down at my feet as I walk in the dark making sure I don’t trip on a tumble weed or a little critter scampering across my path.  Tonight, though, I looked up into the starry, starry night and the song I Wonder as I Wander came to mind.Weed

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,

How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.

For poor, ornery people like you and like I

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.

Just before I left the house I made a snide remark to Dad about some trivial thing he did to annoy me.  Then as I was looking into the sky I suddenly heard the thought

Get out of your own little world and open up to the Big Story that God has for you.       

 Far too often I get caught up in what I can see directly around me, in front of me, and to the side.  Then I wonder about Jesus our Savior who came for to die.  Certainly He wouldn’t have come to live, suffer and die, his only intent being to give his followers a ticket to heaven.Rainbow

During this season of Lent, a time of waiting and pondering the suffering of Jesus Christ, I am drawn to this statement of His: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his live will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”  Matthew 16:24-25 In marriage it is so important to lose our life because that is distinctly how we will save it.  Being annoyed by trivial comments, complaining about dirty socks on the floor, arguing over what movie to watch are simply distractions to keep us in those lesser, smaller stories.          

 Knowing the Bigger Story in which we are living certainly makes our lives and our choices more significant.  Almost everyone has a longing to be part of something bigger than their own little sphere of influence.  There must be more to life than the day in day out grind of work, tending children, eating meals, changing diapers, watching basketball games, looking for hearing aids….

Philosophers call this longing to be a part of a Bigger Story transcendence.  It is the desire to make a difference in the world, to be bound together in some heroic purpose with others of like mind and spirit.  John Eldredge in his book The Sacred Romance, writes so eloquently about God’s incredible pursuit for people who will take a step into a larger story, a story that will consume all their life and desire. SacredRomance That story is the narrative of God pursuing His people, and His people responding by letting their hearts be turned toward and molded by their loving Heavenly Father.

We all love a good story – fairy tales, romances, epics, biographies – any adventure story is worth telling.  The Bible is full of stories about people who have loved, hated, obeyed, rebelled, worshipped, lamented, grieved, rejoiced, failed – people who have experienced every emotion that you have.  You will find that the people who are the most memorable, the ones who have the finest stories are those who understood the Bigger Story.

Consider Joseph.  Sold into slavery and forgotten by his brothers, he became the best slave that he could.  Wrongly accused by his boss’s wife he was thrown into prison for years, and he became the most honorable prisoner that he could.  He knew and believed that there was a Bigger Story of which he was a part.  Because he knew and trusted the Hero of the story, he was free to forgive and wait patiently on God to do whatever He saw fit to do.  Later, God’s story became evident when Joseph was appointed second-in-command over all Egypt in order to save many from starvation during the famine that was to come.

Many people in the Bible knew that they were a part of a Bigger Story.  Others were simply caught up in their own small stories of control and gratification. For many years I struggled to control our family, to make you all do things that I thought were best.  Inevitably God let those plans disintegrate because He wanted me to step into the larger story, giving you daughters and Dad to Him.  God, the Hero of the Bigger Story, has immeasurably greater plans that far surpass anything I could ever imagine for all of you.

I used to think that I needed to be the answer woman and have all the right words for everyone, including you girls, but now my favorite phrase is “You better ask God for wisdom about that one.”  My greatest desire is that each of you will seek God on your own, looking for your place in the Bigger Story, listening, learning and loving.  I can point you to God’s heart, His love of forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, helping the oppressed, and then I can stand back in awe, watching each of you making those choices that will bring you into the Bigger Story.

I am constantly amazed that Jesus came to die for poor ornery people like you and like I.  He loves us just as we are, but has plans for so much more – because Heroes are just like that.

Love, Mom

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