“Are you still married…to the same guy?”
“I don’t know how you put up with him (her)”
“Wow, you deserve a medal!”
These and other similar “Congratulations” are the common response my wife and I get whenever we tell people how long we’ve been married. I don’t know if their well wishes are motivated by envy or anger, but the fact is that we rarely hear genuine congratulations—even from Christians!
Yes, I know that my dear wife has endured my brand of “love” for many years and to tell you the truth, she deserves not a medal, but the biggest crown in the world! I just wish that one year we would hear real congratulations and not jokes or competitions.
I don’t know how long you have been married, but I would like to offer you my most sincere congratulations on your achievement. I would also like to encourage you to stay married, because long marriages are a powerful testimony to this unfaithful world.
In our case, all the credit, honor and glory belongs to Jesus. I am sorry if at any time my heart has swelled with a little pride over the long tenure of our marriage. I am glad that I have been married all these years and it’s all because of the Lord.
I still love my wife (and I know she loves me too), but my weak and feeble love is not the reason of our marriages’ longevity. Jesus has kept us together all these years; in the highs and in the lows and in spite of my many shortcomings.
I suggest that from now on we must celebrate marriages, because it is a dying breed.
“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” (Hebrews 13:4)
Divorce is rampant in the world and many don’t even get married anymore—they just move in together. Our marriages can be a powerful testimony in the name of Jesus, because is a visual representation of the union between Christ and the church.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
I thank God for my marriage and for all the marriages in the world, especially those among Christians. I pray that God will put a stop to the divorce plague and that He will keep us together until the day He calls us home.
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)
- G.
