Two Becoming One Flesh

It is wedding season. We are invited to three weddings in the space of about a month. The wedding this weekend was to a couple that we are mentoring. Picture below is of the wedding party praying for them. That is our ministry and we feel really called to do it given the early challenges of our marriage. We are thankful to be able to make however small a difference in the lives of newly married.

Also this week I found myself apart from my beloved Debsue for three days mid week and now this weekend. When I used to travel a lot 8-10 years ago, it did not seem that hard. But now having been married longer and not traveling as much, I have to admit it is harder and harder to be apart. Things seem a little out of sorts and oh maybe incomplete.

Marriage is two people really becoming one. It is not one plus one equaling three, but one plus one becoming one. I know I am incomplete without my wife. She completes me. I sense the incompleteness when we are apart. It goes beyond missing her - it goes to actually feeling kind of out of sorts. There is something wonderful and even supernatural about it. God weaves together two disparate people into one flesh. I am sure that is what my mother-in-law is going through as she not just grieves for the loss of my father-in-law, but actually has to adjust her life to being without him.

As wonderful as marriage is however, it has to come second to the relationship with Jesus. Even a marriage can become an idol if not trapped properly. No human relationship can track the closeness and intimacy of the creator God. Marriage is the closest human beings come to the intimacy we have with God, but it is a distant second. It is a foretaste, a preview of how God loves the church - but something even more wonderful is to come.