Marriages Happen
The year was 1947 in the United States. The Second World War was over and a farm boy from North Dakota was part of the occupation forces in Germany. A pastor there who had been a navigator in the Luftwaffe, still stinging from the defeat, had a daughter who fell in love with the farm boy from North Dakota. They secretly got married and she eloped with the young lad to America.
Marriages continue to happen in various ways ending up in familial relationships. In his famous poem: ”This be the verse,” Philip Larkin bemoaned that fact.
They [mess] you up, your mom and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
and add some extra, just for you.
I notice of late that some who marry a little later in life and have children are very protective of those children. It is as if they have the capacity to determine the fate of their children. Nancy Guthrie writes in her book Blessed that God determines our fate. Jesus is the first born of the dead and will never die again. He is the future hope of our lives when they are threatened. “Sometimes it seems to us like governments and organizations and philosophies and the dominant culture have all he power in the world. But they don’t. Someone is ruling over them. Their days are numbered.” Page 37 Blessed, Nancy Guthrie, CrossWay, Wheaton, Illinois.
It is not some robot or AI that is telling us this. The Apostle John is receiving these revelations from someone who loves us. And how do we know He loves us? It is always easier to hear hard things when they come from someone who loves us. The only way we ever learn to know this love is to be told about it. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10
However marriage happens, those in that relationship have the right to know Him.
