Respect and Love

There are many mysteries of life.  Proverbs 30:18-19 speaks of four of them. 

"There are three things that are too amazing for me, 

four that I do not understand:

19 the way of an eagle in the sky, 

the way of a snake on a rock, 

the way of a ship on the high seas, 

and the way of a man with a maiden.

I can think of others that the Bible speaks of; the mystery of the Spirit, the mystery of how God became man, the mystery of the Trinity.  These things we will never fully understand and we may even take eternity to learn about the mystery of God.  

As moderns when we think of mystery we think of a "who done it," like Columbo or the mystery of Lost.  As ancients the concept of a mystery was very different.  It was something that as observable was not going to be understood.  Something that was not even supposed to be understood, to fathom it's depths was only to prove the thing more mysterious.  The sense of awe surrounded a mystery.   Modernity's worldview has taken all mysteries out of life and reduced them to only the tangible.  How sad.  

 Saying all of this brings me to the point at hand.  Marriage is one of the biggest mysteries that we can experience.  Meditating on this lately, I have been mulling over and over in my mind about the commands that Christ gives in Ephesians chapter 5. 

"22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

Now, do not skip over the reading of the Scripture and just get to what I say.  The Scripture teaches us something here, but it is still a mystery.  It is amazing to me how this ever works out!  This is one more thing that we as moderns do not understand.  These statements by Paul were RADICAL.  The ancient mindset was not honoring to women, least among them wives.  Christianity forever changed the world in all respects, this being a huge one.  

I have been meditating on the respect for him and the love for her aspect recently.  I dreamed about it, woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it, woke up to have a "gestalt" moment.  I have often wondered how wives love their husbands when they can't respect them?  How do husbands love their wives when they don't feel like it or when we are nags, unkind, and just plain mean?  The Scriptures amaze me.  I will not speak of the husbands here, because I am a wife and know much more about the nagging, unkind, and just plain mean aspect of marriage.  Marriage is a faith proposition.  How do wives love when they don't respect?  By faith.  Faith to allow God to work in her husband's life where she doesn't have to.  Faith to pray and ask God to draw her man closer and closer to Christ, to be a lover of Christ.  Faith to see what Christ sees not what we want, desire, or have.  Why does this amaze me so?  Because, faith is always what it comes down to.  Not some pie in the sky kind of faith, faith not in your husband, faith in the stability, the consistency, the omniscience, the omnipresence, the character of God.  

On those days and times when it seems that all of the above seems completely impossible, that is the time and the circumstances where God is calling us deeper into Himself.  

"The just shall live by faith, Romans 1:17."  "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and in due season He will lift you up, I Peter 5:6."  But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: 

"God opposes the proud 

but gives grace to the humble,  James 4:6."

Awaiting the marriage supper of the Lamb..........................Lynn