Love, Sweet Love

27 years ago, September 25, 1987

The love of a wife to her husband may begin from the supply of her necessities, but afterwards she may love him also for the sweetness of his person; so the soul first loves Christ for salvation but when she is brought to Him and finds what sweetness there is in Him then she loves Him for Himself.   
Richard Sibbs 

"Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God.  Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me."  Ruth 1:16-17 

 

 

We're especially grateful for the enduring marriages of our parents. 
Prior to Pawpaw's move to Heaven (09-27-12), we are thankful we could help Mark's parents celebrate their marriage of 62 years (06-10-50)
My parents celebrated their marriage of 59 years this past July (07-09-55).  

Special note:  I have now been named a Gray longer than I was named a Cleland!  
What a sobering thought!  

Is There Such a Word as Funwork?

Thy Way

I wish Thy way.
And when in me myself should rise,
and long for something otherwise,
Then Lord, take sword and spear
And slay.
Amy Carmichael

A Union Communion

 

"Marriage is a union.
It takes two to make a union.  One cannot do it.
When God created man, He saw that is was not good for him to be alone, and He created a woman from and for him, specifically designed to help him to be suitable for him, to be his mate.  The woman is totally other, totally different, totally God's gift to man, and each stands in relation to the other, responsible to the other in obedience to the command of God, responsible to be a man or a woman, and, in marriage, to unite as one flesh.  It is for this reason that a man leaves his parents.  He forsakes all other ties in the flesh in order to establish  this most intimate one of all, the only one which is a perfect union of one flesh.
There is no competition in a union.
There is no playing off of one against the other, no keeping score, no making of comparisons or insistence on a fifty-fifty division of anything.  Each is for the other, pulling with and not against him.
But we are human.
...this is a lesson which we never stop learning---that whatever gifts either of us [have are] not that we might flaunt them but that we might use them for the sake of other people.  After we were married we discovered how our various gifts fit together astonishingly well, and thus we began to learn the lesson of 1 Corinthians 12:17, 18, 'if the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?  If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?  But as it is God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as He chose.' 
There is a union in the physical body---all the members joined together in harmony and for the good of the whole, all subject to the head.  So there is union in marriage, two separate persons made one in the flesh, and, if they are Christians, one in Christ, subject to His headship.  If they are one in Christ, they have not only union but communion, and this is a priceless thing."

Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman"