Another

            Yesterday was my beloved’s 29^th birthday.

            I was musing yesterday on the earthly-mindedness of we who are Christ’s followers.  How is that we have bought into the mentality (even if in jest) that one must claim his or her age to be perpetually 29?  Many outside Christ laud youth as the most glorious period of one’s life.  At the sign of the first gray hair, many high-light or low-light or dye their entire head.  Any physical sign that you are aging is something to be hidden.  Scripture, by contrast, extols aging.  2 Timothy 2:22: “Flee youthful lusts.”  I Corinthians 13:11: “When I became a man, I put away childish things.”  Proverbs 16:31: “The gray head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”  Rarely does one’s hair turn gray all at once.  So also wisdom is attained one trial, one gray hair at a time.

            I read a simple analogy of marriage the other day: that of a triangle.  Husband and wife are points “A” and “B”; God is the apex.  As each spouse strives to glorify God and know Him more fully, they move nearer the apex, as it were, and at the same time they inevitably grow closer to each other as well.  What a beautiful illustration!

            That illustration reminds me of part of a sermon by Prof. Herman Hanko that my sister Sherry recommended to me some time ago.  In that sermon (I listened to it on-line) he quotes the prayer of one of his seminary professors at his wedding reception: “We thank Thee, O Heavenly Father, that these two who are now husband and wife are also brother and sister [in Christ].”  What a stunning figure, and a reminder that my relationship to my husband is only an earthly one, decreed and given to us by God to serve the eternal relationship we share.  What a privilege and joy to walk my pilgrim way with the man to whom I've been given!  I’m looking forward to attaining more gray hairs together.

            “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor.  For if they fall, the one will life up his fellow…and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.  (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)