Monday 29 July 2013

Relationships Continued (4)

As my youngest son and his fiancée prepare for their wedding this Sat (3rd Aug), in the church that we all went to before I came to Harlow, I have been reflecting a little on how we prepare for what should be a life-times journey. In a society where we want everything as we want it and we want it now - possibly why the fast food shops like McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King are so popular - fast, easy and throw away if we don't like it. Maybe that's why we can't buy wedding cakes in those places - they take too long to make well and are not easy to mass produce.

Good food needs thought, care and love. To make what will hit the spot for the person or people we are cooking for, the ingredients need to be good and wholesome, the cooking done well and the presentation makes it all look good and appetising. The result carried out with love, is good.

As we prepare for the life long journey, called marriage that we are going to share with our partner (and before you ask no I don't hold with same sex Christian marriage). That too needs to be prepared with thought - it should not be rushed into, that's why we do marriage prep. with the couples that marry in the church I Pastor. It takes care, getting to know your partner, learning to love them for who they are and not who we might want them to be and accepting their traits even if they are sometimes annoying. It takes good ingredients - compassion, compromise, sharing, caring, forgiving, supporting among others.

The whole is carried out with love. A love that grows as the marriage grows, a love that can overcome all things , can take joy in each other and can bond two people more firmly than if they had used super-glue.

My wife and I are celebrating 36 years of marriage this year, we have been blessed that our children have found good marriage partners and my prayer is that they will enjoy life long marriages that will grow in every respect as they go on. Christ is central to our marriage and is important to our children, part of the preparation for a Christian marriage must be to put God in the right place - above everything else. If God is relegated then self will win and self is a destructive force in a marriage.

Fast food beef burgers and chicken snacks are no substitute for the real thing and the real thing takes time to prepare and get right, just like a good wedding cake. Marriage takes time to prepare for and to mature and blossom, the real thing has no imitations, no quick and easy alternatives.



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