Disclaimer: The sharing is pure from my personal view; therefore, please don’t take it to be absolute. Thanks.
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As my age advanced, hearing ability started to deteriorate. Sometimes, I couldn’t follow my wife if she didn’t speak loudly. Recently, I heard an interesting story from one of the radio broadcasts that I usually listen to.
A marriage couple celebrates their 60th year anniversary by inviting friends and families to have a gathering. Because of their advanced age, both of them are having hearing difficulties.
During the celebration, the husband starts to say:
“Honey, after 60 years of marriage, my love to you is still “try and true!””
“What?” the wife responded with loud voice.
So the husband has to say it one more time. This time he raises his voice by saying
“After 60 years of marriage, my love to you is still “try and true”.
“After 60 years with you, I am tired of you too!” The wife quickly shouted it back.
From the story, you can see that it is very important to listen carefully otherwise, confusion and misunderstanding could happen. In addition, the feel of “I am tired of you” should not be foreign to us and in fact, it is prevalent in today’s society, I think.
Marriage was established by God after God created Adam (Genesis 2:20-25) and felt that Adam needs a suitable helper. God then created Eve from Adam’s rib. Adam called her “Woman” as Adam recognized her as his “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. “Man” and “Woman” were then united into one flesh – marriage. As apostle Paul indicated to us, the relationship between the church and Christ is like husband and wife – holy and intimate.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (你們作丈夫的，要愛你們的妻子，正如基督愛教會，為教會捨己‧Ephesians 5:25)
If the relationship of marriage is supposed to be holy and intimate, why after a few years of marriage, there exists such a feel of “I am tired of you”? Why our love fades so soon? The probable cause, I think, could due to our limited and sinful flesh. The key is how we can emulate our Lord’s love to church onto our spouse.
How about within a church? Is our love to brothers and sisters fading too? Very likely! The good thing is our Lord knows our weakness (Matthew 26:41b). He encouraged us to remain in Him because He is the source of love (John 15). Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s be reminded by the meaning of “Christ loved the church” when we have the thought of “I am tired of you” comes up. May our church be full of Christ’s love…..