Tag: Marriage

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Do Not Open Until Christmas

Daily Reading

Song of Songs 1-8

Daily Thought

How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!
Your lips drip nectar, my bride;
honey and milk are under your tongue. ~Song of Songs 5:10-11

Solomon’s Song of Songs reminds us of God’s creative delight in fashioning the passions and pleasures of love and marriage. This is love at heaven’s height, the love we long for, to be cherished and savored and guarded. The world sings of love and celebrates sex in free-for-all fashion and you get what you pay for. Beware the ways of the world for they cheapen us. “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom” (Song of Songs 2:15), Solomon warns the young virgins.

My cousin Jim would sneak under the tree a week before Christmas and open his big gift to see what it was. He would play with it, rewrap it, and repeat the next night. By Christmas morning, the surprise was over, the wrapping tattered, and the joy of discovery lost. 

We were created with a powerful passion that must be protected. The young woman urges her friends, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song of Songs 2:7). The purity of your youth is a precious gift; do not open it early. It belongs to someone special.

She spies him, “My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:10). He observes her, too, “As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women” (Song of Songs 2:2). They each have found the other, their one-in-a-million, and there is a wedding, and they open the gift.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. ~Genesis 2:24-25

Daily Prayer

Loving Father, thank You for Your goodness. You looked at Your Creation and saw that it was good. Except one thing. Man was alone. You made woman, brought them together, and it was very good.

God, may my life be holy, my love pure, and my marriage an example of all You had in mind when you paired man with woman and said, “This is very good.”

Amen

Daily Question

What is marriage and why is it to be protected?

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An Excellent Wife

Daily Reading

Proverbs 30-31

Daily Thought

It was not “very good” in the Garden until Adam met Eve. Little wonder, then, that Proverbs, a book of wisdom written by male mentors to young men, is not complete without a portrait of a godly wife; “an excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10). What follows is a composite of qualities worthy of praise, and indeed should be praised–“her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (v 28). Unlikely, however, that they rose before her, “she rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens” (v 15).

Read these twenty-two verses detailing her day (Proverbs 31:10-31) and you are worn out by the end. The description of this multi-talented, hard-working, strong, wise, wonderful woman is hard to live up to, for it is a picture of the ideal, and it is written to the man, not the woman. Rather than a checklist for women to fulfill, this is a portrait to revise the image young men oft have of an ideal woman–“charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (v 30). 

The book of Proverbs is 31 chapters of wisdom. The last half of the last chapter is devoted to the description of a worthy wife. It took the previous thirty chapters to fashion a man worthy of her.

Daily Prayer

My Creator, You made me in Your image, male and female You made us. What a grand plan. Man and woman, husband and wife, together displaying Your glory.

God, may my love for my spouse bring you glory and honor. May I display Your wisdom in my marriage. And thank You, because this marriage thing, it is very good!

Amen

Daily Question

What qualities do you most look for in a spouse?

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An Excellent Wife

Daily Reading

Proverbs 30-31

Daily Thought

It was not “very good” in the Garden until Adam met Eve. Little wonder, then, that Proverbs, a book of wisdom written by male mentors to young men, is not complete without a portrait of a godly wife; “an excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10). What follows is a composite of qualities worthy of praise, and indeed should be praised–“her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (v 28). Unlikely, however, that they rose before her, “she rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens” (v 15).

Read these twenty-two verses detailing her day (Proverbs 31:10-31) and you are worn out by the end. The description of this multi-talented, hard-working, strong, wise, wonderful woman may be hard to live up to, but it is a picture of the ideal, and it is written to the man, not the woman. Rather than a checklist to fulfill, this is a portrait to revise the image young men oft have of an ideal woman–“charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (v 30). The book of Proverbs is 31 chapters of wisdom. The last half of the last chapter is devoted to the description of a worthy wife. It took the previous thirty chapters to fashion a man worthy of her.

Daily Prayer

My Creator, You made me in Your image, male and female You made us. What a grand plan. Man and woman, husband and wife, together displaying Your glory.

God, may my love for my spouse bring you glory and honor. May I display Your wisdom in my marriage. And thank You, because this marriage thing, it is very good!

Amen