Marriage

What is marriage? Is it a partnership? Well, I suppose so. A partnership is a couple of people with an agreement between each other about sharing. Maybe they share labour, maybe they share money, maybe they share responsibility. So I suppose a marriage is a kind of partnership. But two people in a partnership don't share everything. So a marriage is more than a partnership. Is a marriage a sharing? Well, it is certainly that. What is mine is now my wife's; what is hers is now mine. And that is pretty total. Sometimes I think people don't really see that part of it, but it is true. Certainly I myself often don't see - or accept :-) - that side of things. A complete sharing comes much closer, but marriage is more than that. Marriage is a kind of surgical operation - a sort of transplant: (Genesis 2:21-25): 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. This is hard to understand. After 39 years of knowing Susan and 36 years of marriage I am only beginning to get glimpses of what it means. It means not less than partnership, sharing, total sharing, and all the rest of it. But it means much more. It means that in a way I can no longer treat of Susan's interests and my interests - at least not simply. We are one. Alas, we often do not act as one. Yet this is the reality: "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." (Matthew 19:6). When there is an apparent conflict between experience and reality, I must choose to believe in the reality. It is, to be sure, a reality known by faith - but that is the real; what I experience is my attempt to live according to the real. Adele and Luke have chosen that reality: video of Luke's and Adele's wedding Picasa album of Luke's and Adele's wedding