“a man will .
. . be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame”
Genesis 2:24-25 (NIV)
The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame”
Genesis 2:24-25 (NIV)
For
thousands of years Christians and Jews have considered these verses foundational
to society. Men and women are
created different from one another, to complement one another, to be equal to
one another. Together they mirror in
some unique way the image of God. Together
they were given the responsibility of being God’s stewards of and God’s
benevolent co-rulers over all of creation (Work
was created as a good thing!)
They
were also given the task of procreating (chapter two specifies how this was to
happen in a family), raising their children and passing on to them the task they
were given.
Given
this all of this, it is not surprising that God created each of us with an
innate desire for connection with opposite sex.
This desire is experienced physically, emotionally, romantically,
sexually, in one’s fantasies, dreams, hopes and yearnings.
It is described with words like chemistry, connection, clicking, love,
being in love, falling in love, falling for her/him, smitten, hooked and more.
It’s
not our fault, God set us up for attraction.
What I’ve noticed however is that it takes only seconds to “fall”,
sort of like tripping, or having an accident, experiencing something that just
happens to us.
On
Sunday we will begin a three week series on what it takes to stay
in love. The Bible
has little to say about falling in love but a lot to say about staying there.
For more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
Hope we are not deifying marriage. Paul viewed celibacy as the first choice and marriage as a second choice that was preferable to burning with passion. Jesus showed no preference between the married and the unmarried. I pray that we may all experience God's love in our sex obsessed culture with or without marriage.
ReplyDeleteI believe that what Paul wrote in 1Cor7 is that both celibacy and marriage were gifts from God:
ReplyDelete7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
I also believe that God created and gave marriage to a man and a woman to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the Church - and also so that they can help one another to see more clearly who God is and to be closer to Him. Practically speaking, it seems that being married and knowing that I have covenanted with my spouse to love each other for our whole lives, there is a sense of permanence, safety, commitment, and perseverance that all seems so powerful that it increases my faith in God - growing with each year of marriage. For it is only God that could have brought this about in me (and in my spouse.)
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