It's Not Luck

We've all noticed the current trend for young people to marry later and later, deferring the day until various conditions are met. Education completed, career established, the field played sufficiently, etc. , as Mark Regnerus, author and sociology professor, noted recently in his Washington Post Article,

Convinced that there actually is a recipe for guaranteed marital success that goes something like this: Add a postgraduate education to a college degree, toss in a visible amount of career success and a healthy helping of wealth, let simmer in a pan of sexual variety for several years, allow to cool and settle, then serve. Presto: a marriage with math on its side.

Too bad real life isn't like that. Marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you're fully formed. We learn marriage, just as we learn language, and to the teachable, some lessons just come easier earlier in life. "Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth," added Tennyson to his lines about springtime and love.

I realize that marrying early means that you engage in a shorter search. In the age of online dating personality algorithms and matches, Americans have become well acquainted with the cultural (and commercial) notion that melding marriage with science will somehow assure a good fit. But what really matters for making marriage happen and then making it good are not matches, but mentalities: such things as persistent and honest communication, conflict-resolution skills, the ability to handle the cyclical nature of so much of marriage, and a bedrock commitment to the very unity of the thing. I've met 18-year-olds who can handle it and 45-year-olds who can't.

Today, there's an even more compelling argument against delayed marriage: the economic benefits of pooling resources. My wife and I married at 22 with nothing to our name but a pair of degrees and some dreams. We enjoy recounting those days of austerity, and we're still fiscal conservatives because of it, better poised to weather the current crisis than many, because marriage is an unbelievably efficient arrangement and the best wealth-creating institution there is. Married people earn more, save more and build more wealth compared with people who are single or cohabiting. (Say what you will about the benefits of cohabitation, it's a categorically less stable arrangement, far more prone to division than marriage.) We can combine incomes while reducing expenses such as food, child care, electricity, gas and water usage. Marriage may be bourgeois, but it's also the greenest of all social structures. Michigan State ecologists estimate that the extra households created by divorce cost the nation 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and more than 600 billion gallons of water in a year. That's a mighty big carbon footprint created in the name of solitude. Marriage may not make you rich -- that's not its purpose -- but a biblical proverb reveals this nifty side effect: "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work."

So while many young Americans mark their days in the usual ways -- by hitting the clubs, incessantly checking Facebook, Twittering their latest love interest and obsessing about their poor job prospects or how to get into graduate school -- my applause goes out to those among them who've figured out that the proverb was right. One of those is Jennifer, a 23-year-old former student of mine. She's getting married this fall. It wasn't religion that made her do it. It wasn't fear of being alone. It was simply affection. She met Jake while still in college and decided that there was no point in barhopping through her 20s. Her friends balked. She stood firm. Now they're bridesmaids.

There is, unfortunately, quite a bit of negativity attached to an earlier marriage. Young people face both parental and peer pressure discouraging the idea, while extolling the supposed benefits of waiting. But, it seems the studies and surveys are once again confirming the wisdom of Scripture. The older we get, the more set in mind, opinions and our own ways of doing things. Compromise may prove more difficult. Getting started together at a younger age, working in tandem, and with the energy of youth, can help achieve that goal of unity. It takes commitment of course, and the decision to love. No luck involved here.

It's Not a Tulip Garden

I love my tulips. Somehow just couldn't resist. Actually I was being impatient in the supermarket line, stepped away from my cart and spotted these lovelies calling out to me. A good distraction and better than tabloid headlines, from my bad attitude.

I was journaling yesterday about unrighteous attitudes, and how we can think our reasons for them are justifiable. Attitudes being the thoughts and intents of the heart. Later, I'm often not even able to remember what those so-called reasons were, but unfortunately, the sad consequences of our poor disposition may follow after us into the future, despite whatever we do to change and correct it.

It brings to mind David's wife, Michal. From her point of view many factors would have justified her contempt and the harsh words spoken to her husband. She had loved him and helped him to escape the wrath of Saul, her father. He on the other hand, seems to have forgotten her, had married at least five other women, at the point years later - after she had been given by her father to another, and is now in an apparently happy marriage to a man devoted to her - when David brings her back for political, and or prideful reasons. She is also without children, a pitiful position in that culture. Is her bad attitude therefore okay?

After sympathizing with Michal, we might attempt to see things from God's perspective. Though, of course, we can't understand it all, we do know He is more interested in our heart attitudes than our temporary happiness. David was her rightful husband, whatever right or wrong decisions he may have later made with regard to other wives. Any children she might have borne could have been said to be of the line of Saul, and a possible cause of future contention or claim to the throne of Solomon, God's choice. Was Michal grateful for the good things she did have?

We are always in control of how we think and act, irregardless of circumstances and other people. I guess it's a cliche to say life is what we make of it, but still... Is life ever fair, ever without trial, ever a tulip garden all of the time?

Little Houses of Horrors

... into the depths of the sea

Thanksgiving, being a time to remember things we appreciate, I am so grateful for God's word - for the encouragement, correction, direction, glimpse of the future, but always the comfort that it is.

"Do not fear the reproach of men
or be terrified by their insults.
For the moth will eat them up like a garment;
the worm will devour them like wool.
...I, even I, am he who comforts you." Isaiah 51:7-8a & 12a

Family, on the other hand, can be a real house of horrors. I know I've had it easy, compared to some, still after the 7 page rant I got the other day from my sister, Barbara, who has managed to totally turn my parents against the rest of their family, feeding them an ongoing pack of lies and negative, fossilized, venomous reptile poop, day in and day out, it's difficult to know exactly how to handle the situation. What can you do? I just ask God for direction, one day at a time. The letter has been consigned to the burnable rubbish (some of us still do that out in the country) where it belongs. What a lot of anger, jealousy and resentment, hoarded up over the years, has been revealed. Whew! Sigh .... a part of me wants to answer every stupid remark and set her properly straight, but am restraining myself. Yes, I've done things in the past, not always the best or right even. But, let's all move on. Get over it.

All of this brought to mind the verse in Micah,

"You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the
depths of the sea." Micah 7:19

I just had to drive down to the cliffs and take a few shots of the ocean.

We're born into an earthly family and have no choice in the matter - that's one birth, the physical. Being born again gives us the pleasure and opportunity of an entirely new spiritual family, though again, no choice on who makes up membership (we do have a choice regarding who we hang out with). Spouse and children should, hopefully, be a part of this new family.

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh." Genesis 2:24

This leaving has also the sense of growing up and getting past poor upbringing and any bad training or habits. As Christians we are supposedly maturing, renewed and reborn, putting aside the past as new creations in Christ.

Jesus had a few surprising things to say regarding family, and I am definitely going to take those words to heart:

"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:48-50

"Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." Matthew 8:21-22

"And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven." Matthew 23:9

On the other hand, those who lie and refuse the truth were told:

"You belong to your father, the devil..." John 8:44

We shouldn't be too surprised about this division along spiritual lines, as he warned us of it.
And, this morning I was reading in Isaiah, something that directs me to keep my mouth (and pen) shut, with regard to answering her lies and accusations:

"He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth." Isaiah 53:7

Jesus is always a good example. On a positive note, I am thankful for the true family I have, both blood and spirit relations, those who are following Jesus, being understanding and forgiving; not always perfect, but working on it and growing.

Hospital Blues

Just visited my Dad in the hospital. Our family is certainly in a weird groove. Half on one side and half on the other belief-wise, aligned on opposing sides with the cross of Jesus the dividing line. In Matthew 10:34-37, he says, "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man's enemies will be the members of his own household." So true in our case. Am I alone here?

Jesus also has this to say with regard to family: "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.'" Mark 3:33-35

So, if members of your family write insulting letters about you and snub you; or when a "brother" ( in the flesh) tries to prevent his Christian family members from seeing their father in the hospital, then, hey, you're blessed! "If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you." 1 Peter 4:14 I'm afraid I haven't quite gotten to that perspective yet, but it's good to know in which direction righteousness lies.

That's why I desperately need God's Word. It tells me to "live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing." 1 Peter 3:8-9 There we go with the blessings again. As you might have guessed, I'm writing this out because I need to imprint it on my own heart.