Divorce

My son retrieved the Saturday mail and dropped it on the kitchen counter. Rare are the personal letters that grace our mailbox anymore. No doubt the same goes for you. We don't hand write. E-mail and texting have robbed us of the thought out, time-taking, penmanship-testing personal letter. I think we are the weaker for it.

My eyes lit up when I saw a personal letter in Saturday's mail. But then I opened it.

Many folks get too busy during the holidays to crank out the Christmas form letter (does not equal a personal letter, btw). Springtime is a bit more quiet so they'll craft an Easter missive to send to the masses. Such was this letter; it did carry a personal note within it though.

The noted stated in a single sentence and in a chipper tone discordant to the content that the writer and her husband had legally separated. It then continued with the other nifty things going on in the family.

I nearly urped. My lungs felt like the vacuum of space had just sucked all the air from the room. More than twenty years of marriage tossed upon the dung heap.

The writer and her husband worshiped with us a number of years ago. They believed the Bible to be God's word, and they believed what it said about marriage. "God hates divorce...what God has joined together, let not man put asunder." You can't fall out of love. You can stop choosing to love. You can steer the ship of your marriage onto the shoals of your selfishness.

I guess I made some audible expression. "What's up," queried my son. I asked him if he knew the family. He replied with concern in his voice, "No, did (he) die?"

Did he die? Hmmm...natural death versus divorce. Give me the latter any day of the week. The former brings pain and great difficulty, but death comes to all men. Natural death is expected, you just don't know when your partner will be taken. The ship remains intact, still on its course, and the hands that remain do their best to hold the tiller. The latter shatters the hull. The ship is destroyed upon the rocks of self-interest. Often the shipmates never see it coming. They don't know one of the crew has betrayed them. He escapes on his dinghy leaving his marooned former family to fetch for themselves.

I don't know the circumstances behind this marriage's foundering so I make no assumptions in their case, but it caused me to think back upon the divorces whose circumstances I knew about in detail. In every case of divorce I have been close to in my adult life, every case, infidelity has been causal. In most of those situations, the man has betrayed his bride. Paring those situations down, if you'd have asked the man a year or two prior to the treachery, he'd have been offended at the postulating that such could ever be the case in his life.

To the married men whose eyes grace these words and to myself, I call out: Keep your eyes on the prize! Remember the wife of your youth. Let her breasts satisfy you. Drink water from your own cistern. Love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her! A fool scoops burning coals into his lap. A real man will not, must not, break his vow to his bride. A coward and a brigand dallies outside his home.

I scream this at myself as loudly as I scream into cyberspace. Infidelity (unfaithfulness) often brings grisly death to a marriage and wreaks devastation upon a family. Is it any wonder that the misuse of the special treasure God meant to bring life, physical union, should be punishable by death in the Law?

Gents, keep it zipped. Make a covenant with your eyes as Job did (Job 31:1-12). Keep them off the magazines. Keep them off the secretary or coworker. Keep them out of the dark alleys of the internet. Guard your tongue. Let your flattery be only for the lovely filly who nestles beside you in bed each night. Keep your steps far from those who might entice you. Have the courage to flee when so required (2 Timothy 2:22, 1 Corinthians 6:18) Oh, man in the mirror, are you listening?

I pray that God empower us toward single-mindedness toward our spouse as we seek to honor Him with our lives.

And I pray that God would bring healing to the families devastated and shipwrecked by divorce and/or infidelity. Oh, that through God's grace my family would never pen such a letter much less during the Easter season. And so, too, for you, my friends.