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MARRIAGE - The Pursuit Of Excellence !
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“By the year 2030, the family as an institution will be carried on by a minority.” So says a distinguished American author in a recent book about future life in the western world. Presumably, the majority of us will be just living together.
- Modern man has made a travesty of a great institution. Marriage, this highest of all human aspirations, is in a sad state of decline. At times, it’s all you can do to keep your head above water in the modern, turbulent sea of matrimony. Indeed, divorce has become an institution in itself.
- Does it have to be this way? It certainly never started out like that. Take a look at the average wedding picture: husband and wife, beaming faces wreathed in big window smiles. They literally radiate happiness! They have eyes only for each other as their countenances proudly proclaim to all around: “This is forever.”
- So why do marriages fail then? What goes wrong? I am convinced that the answer lies in people's failure to understand that marriage is a wonderful and blessed experience in the common pursuit of excellence. Victor Frankyl, Austrian psychiatrist and father of logo therapy, said that if you have a ‘why’, you can endure any ‘how’.
- To begin with, marriage fulfills two very basic psychological human needs, viz: 1. The need to love and be loved, and 2. The need to live with a sense of purpose. Marriage is the foundation upon which two lives are committed to one common goal: the joys of sharing, loving, supporting and complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses. It is a life-long friendship with your best friend, sustained and nurtured by commitment and understanding; a commitment which allows for no viable alternate life-style, like separation and divorce. Surely, marriage is no mean undertaking - this greatest of adventures - living together until death. Ann Landers calls it "the most important arrangement for good or ill in life."
- At times, the union will be tested in the furnace of affliction; hammered out on the anvil of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, until it comes forth like burnished gold.
- The marriage relationship is a ship on a journey on the ocean of life; often buffeted by contrary winds: winds of adversity, winds of change and chances; winds of discouragement and discontent, givings and misgivings. But through all of life’s varied vicissitudes, this ship survives to its safe harbor, guided unerringly by the light of love shining steadfastly on to the dawning of a brighter day.
- This purposeful commitment in the relentless pursuit of human excellence.
To stand face to face in warm embrace with someone you cherish, in precious and private moments, knowing: ". . this is forever".- Your marriage, like a garden untended, neglect it . . and it will wither and eventually die. But cherish, cultivate and nourish it, and it will live gloriously through the countless vicissitudes of life's enduring years.
To behold the matchless beauty and wonder in a child's delighted eyes and feel a sense of joy and pride that she is yours, - forever,
To face life together, hand in hand, amidst the toils and chores of daily living, knowing: "Someone cares", and finally, in the sunset of your lives together
To look forward to advancing years, side by side, keenly aware of a deep and abiding sense of belonging and fulfillment,
- Is to have participated in the grandest of all human and earthly dramas:
- Marriage - the ULTIMATE in the pursuit of excellence.
For you see, as Mary Martyn said in Oscar Hammerstein's South Pacific:
"A bell is not a bell until you ring it, |
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Write us at:
pastor@wisdomforlivingministries.org
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