February 3 - Not Me

Exodus 17:8-19:15

Matthew 22:34-23:12

Psalm 27:7-14

Proverbs 6:27-35

When I read the passages about the greatest commandments, I see the words "love the Lord your God with all heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...love your neighbor as yourself."  What I read is "not me".  In this context of relationships and the prioritization of God and others above self, my thoughts turn to marriage.  

When I think of the examples of successful marriages in my life, two come to mind: my parents and my maternal grandparent.  I think of my maternal grandmother's need for attention and affirmation, and how my grandfather, for all his work and however much my grandmother's needs may have been bother and burden, indulged her constantly.  For example, he would, each day, wake up early, and brew my grandmother a cup of coffee so she would wake up to its aroma.  In a country with maids, with so demanding a job, he put his wife ahead of him.  Each day. They were married over sixty years, till he died in 2002.

I think of my parents too.  Coming from such different backgrounds with baggage that at one point made it seem like their marriage was doomed, my father at some point decided that who he was and what he wanted was not as important as my mom's happiness and, consequently, their marriage.  And he struggled, increasingly with God's strength as dad got to know Him, to change.  They hit bottom in 1988, twenty-five years ago...and today we are talking about how to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary next year. 

Happy marriages seem so rare these days, seem like they require a healthy dose of divine intervention - and they do.  I do not believe a marriage could ever stand on two legs - the third, the strongest leg always had to be our Lord.  But the two legs had to do their part too - and in the passage above God gives us the simplest of instruction manuals - love God foremost and as much as we can, and love others the way we would love ourselves.  My father and my grandfather have demonstrated to me that God's instruction manual works.  I pray I live up to their example, and to the blessing I have been given in my wife. In the context of my relationship with God and with her, I pray I learn to say, each day:  "not me".