Reacting To My Post

I wrote a post for Journey the Way yesterday about why singles should look forward to a listening through a marriage series. Here are the points:

1. Because we, most of us, hope to be married someday.
Whether the desire is in our hearts at this moment or not doesn’t really matter. Societal influence has told us since we were tiny that part of growing up is getting married. Sooner or later he/she will come over our horizon and we’ll get married. We need to be preparing for that eventuality. So it’s wise to sit in a marriage series.

2. Because we don’t know everything.
We’re young and dumb… at least that’s how I phrase it. We don’t know everything; we should not be arrogant enough to think a marriage series will not/cannot apply to us. Wrong. Learn to learn. Someday we’ll look back to this series and praise God for the grace it was to learn then as opposed to learn by failures. So it’s wise to sit in a marriage series.

3. Because we need to learn how to be biblical men and women.
Now is the time to become godly men. Now is the time to become godly women. Now is the time to learn our places and roles in marriage and aim at attaining the beauty of being men and women sold out for seeing God glorified in our marriages.

4. To grow up.
Rather than playing X-Box or gossiping over her makeup, we need to be mature. Grow up and believe the gospel. To have an aim, a mission, in life and be headed in that direction, to be able to look into our future spouse’s eyes and say, “I’m going there, after the glory of God, will you come with me?”

5. To see our future children love Jesus.
Oh, that our kids would love Jesus more than us their parents! Oh, that we would be singles praying earnestly for our unborn children to be fervently in love with the gospel! Oh, that our sons would aim at nothing less than God glorified! Oh that our daughters would be women who are lost in the beauty of Jesus their Lover!

It's true, I'm looking forward to learning about marriage even though there's still time before I get married. Every cynic I've spoken to who has a wife or husband is glad for the relationship, intimacy, and wholeness. So sure, there may be no need to be overly (sophmorically) excited about a sermon series, but there is a hope to care about what's said, and a wanting to learn.

"Learn to learn." (Probably one of the best lines I've written in a while and I'm sure someone else did it first.) If ever there comes a time in our lives when we aren't learning then we've missed something and are now the misguided and seemingly useless. Because one who isn't learning isn't helping.

Lastly, to my children - those little ones yet unborn - I've prayed for you since the day I believed the gospel. Those lines above - yea - those are for you. 

This should be a stretching couple of months. And it ought to be worth it.

Black & White Clouds

Down the street from my house is a church. The church has a beautiful garden in the front; it’s dedicated to someone who died.

Often when I need to think I’ll sit on one of the three benches around the outskirts of the shrubs, on the one hidden from the streetlight by the waterfall. It was particularly pungent this time.

The person who died was one of my closest friends growing up.

The garden is in their honor.

There are three kids in my memories. One was just married this weekend, and it was my pleasure to be in the wedding. The other is beholding the glory of God with an unveiled face. The last is myself.

I didn’t know it was this garden that bore their name when I moved in it wasn’t a planned thing. But now I’m glad I’m near their last physical memorial.

Death, the final pang of the fall, the last twinge of the fight of faith, the bittersweet road that must be traveled by all, it is the end.

Spiritually, death is beautiful.

Physically, death is tragedy.

Memorial-ly, death is falling snow.

Never again will the memories of those gone be as pure as it was when the person was there to shake away the constantly falling snow. But the snow never stops, and as soon as they’re gone the snow begins to distort the real them, soon they’re what we want them to be, all the good and none of the bad (C.S. Lewis).

Yet, this applies to more than the dead. It applies to every relationship we’ve ever been a part of. Either we remember only the bad, or only the good. We’ll never get the whole picture right. The situations are too complex for our minds to remember ever little piece, too many subtleties, too many.

But we can still learn from the memory. We can still look to the breaker of the curse. We can still be fond of those gone.

And we can celebrate the friends we still have, those ones which marry and laugh, the ones who’ll be there tomorrow, the ones who text in the night. Because all of life isn’t death, and all of eternity isn’t sorrow, because there is Jesus.