Rumination - Was up minutes before the 5:15 alarm this morning. Then I headed out for a plodding power walk. Mercy, the body didn't want to cooperate this morning. At least the temp was 60 degrees. Though the humidity this morning was up there, the sign of that being how wet I was when I got back to my door forty eight minutes later.
It took a lot of will power to get out there this morning. The temptation to reset the alarm on my cell and stay under the warm and inviting blankets bore upon me. But I managed to push on even though my feelings said I was crazy and to just do what I wanted to do; go back to sleep.
After breakfast and devotion time in the Word, I finally made it to the shower and as is the way my mind works, I started thinking over people I had prayed for, the Bible study I'm currently leading at church on world views, yesterday's sermon by my dad, and the culture at large.
It's a lot to deal with while a shower washes away the morning efforts.
Somehow my mind turned to divorce, perhaps because of several couples and singles I pray for on my walks. I ruminated upon Christ and His bride, the Church, and how that is the model for marriage.
And I thought about our culture and its view of marriage today and it occurred to me that the view was built upon a self-centered position. Not exactly a revelation for many of you I'm sure, and not really a revelation for me. More a clarification of thought.
So many enter into marriage with the mindset that it will complete them, make them whole, satisfy their desires (the world would lie and tell us these are "needs").
This is where marriage I think breaks down for the most part, with this view of the marriage relationship being for self and not for the other. Eventually, the marriage becomes tiring or wearing and fails to satisfy the self.
In essence this mindset is one where the marriage relationship is a tool to meet one's desires and when that tool ceases to work it is disgarded.
Can you imagine if Christ felt that way about you?
It saddens me that many in the Western Church today have adopted this world view on marriage. It's a sin of which the Church needs to repent and cast off its leaching embrace.
