If your husband wants a divorce and ask you to pick any precious thing from his house and go away with it, what will you take?
In Sidon, it happened that a man took a wife with whom he lived for ten years and she bore him no children. When they came to COURT to be divorced, the man said to his wife:
“Take any PRECIOUS OBJECT I have in my house—take it and go back to your father’s house.” Thereupon, the Chief Judge said: “Even as you were wed with food and drink [being served], so you are not to separate save with food and drink [being served].”
What did the wife do? She prepared a great feast, gave her husband too much to drink [so that he fell asleep], then beckoned to her menservants and maidservants saying, “Take him to my father’s house.” At midnight he woke up from his sleep and asked, “Where am I?” She replied, “Did you not say, ‘Whatever precious object I have in my house—take it and go back to your father’s house?’ I have no object more precious than you.”
When the Chief Judge heard what the wife had done, he prayed on the couple’s behalf, and they were remembered with children.
There are all sorts of reasons for breakdown in marriage: Everything from something as serious as infidelity, to something as simple as poor communication in the midst of a house full of kids. We are all a work in progress and the most important thing is to keep working.
Sometimes it helps to take a step back and remember what we promised first and foremost. To love our spouse through good and bad. When life changes. When kids come along. When the hard stuff hits. Through it all.
So, today I want to state what seems obvious, but we so often forget.
SEEING OUR SPOUSE AS A GIFT FROM GOD.
Proverbs 19:14 says “Houses and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.” What the Bible really teaches is that wives are a gift to men from the Lord. This is all the way back from the beginning with Adam and Eve, God looked at him and said, “You need help.
Let me make a wife for you.” And so he crafted Eve and gave Adam the gift of his wife.
God, not only in grace but also in wisdom, has gifted us with our spouse. When we are challenged by the stresses of life, our spouse might not always seem like God’s good, wise and gracious gift to us. But to keep in focus the vision of our marriage as a gift of friendship and companionship from God, we need to value and treat our spouse as our most important relationship.
How different would our marriages be if we consistently saw our spouse as a gift from God to us?
How might our relationship be different if we saw them as a friend instead of a foe when we have to reconcile our differences?
How might our marriage be better if we saw them as one who complements us instead of competes with us when we face difficult challenges?
Oh, how often we forget that simple truth. My wife Sally is a precious child of God and she is a gift from God to me. I am also a precious gift from God to her.
This sacred bond with intimate companionship and divine purpose is worth every ounce of energy required to hope for and work toward. Marriage will not always be what we expected or dreamed of, but marriage by God’s design is good – very good!
By Jabari & Sally McDimar
President, IMI Kenya
