Falling In Love For All The Right Reasons!

Today is a day to thank God for mothers! Mom the work that you do is invaluable, important, and priceless! Thank you for all you do!

Moms are important to the health, well-being, and sanity of families as evidenced by a recently released correspondence that took place in an anonymous American home. It is entitled, “When Mom Gets Sick.”

Monday A.M.

Dearest: Sleep late. Everything under control. Lunches packed. Kids off to school. Menu for dinner planned. Your lunch is on a tray in refrigerator: fruit cup, finger-sandwiches. Thermos of hot tea by bedside. See you around six.

Tuesday A.M.

Honey: Sorry about the egg rack in the refrigerator. Hope you got back to sleep. Did the kids tell you about the Coke I put in the thermoses? The school might call you on this. Dinner may be a little late. I’m doing your door-to-door canvas for liver research. Your lunch is in refrigerator. Hope you like leftover chili.

Wednesday A.M.

Dear Doris: Why in the name of all that is sane would you put soap powder in the flour canister! If you have time, could you please come up with a likely spot for Chris’s missing shoes? We’ve checked the clothes hamper, garage, and back seat of the car and wood box. Did you know the school has rules about bedroom slippers? There’s some cold pizza for you in a napkin in the oven drawer. Will be late tonight. Driving eight Girl Scouts to tour meatpacking house.

Thursday A.M.

Doris: Don’t panic over water in hallway. It crested last night at 9 P.M. Will finish laundry tonight. Please pencil in answers to following:

1. How do you turn on the garbage disposal? I thought it was automatic. Guess not.

2. How do you turn off the milkman?

3. Why would that rotten kid leave his shoes in his boots?

4. What do you do with leftovers when they begin to snap at you when you open the refrigerator door?

I don’t know what you’re having for lunch! Surprise me!

Friday A.M.

Hey: Don’t drink from pitcher by the sink. Am trying to restore pink dress shirt to original white. Take heart. Tonight, the ironing will be folded, house cleaned and dinner on time...I called your mother.

Family life gets interesting doesn’t it?

This morning we begin a three-week series on marriage entitled “Marriage… for all the Right Reasons.”

The series title is based a book by Dr. Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony.com entitled, “Falling in Love for all the Right Reasons.” Warren is a licensed psychologist who practiced for nearly 40 years. Now this sermon series is not an endorsement for the website and the organization behind the website, but I was intrigued by the title of the book when I spotted it a few weeks ago at a local bookstore.

It is written to single people but married people would find it worthwhile reading. We are using it for discussion, along with the Bible, in the downstairs adult Sunday School class and we will pick up the study next Sunday morning after worship.

The whole assumption behind the eHarmony operation is that through rigorous research of successfully married couples, twenty-nine different dimensions of compatibility (their words) have been discovered in these marriages. And their view is that you need to be compatible at a certain level on all twenty-nine dimensions.

Does the Bible support this idea? Well the Bible says some important things about relationships and that includes marriage. Dr. Warren is a Christian and his faith comes through at several points in the book. But, what does the Bible say about marriage?

It says a lot about marriage. In fact, we have to only get to verse 24 of Genesis 2 (the second chapter in the Bible) to read about the permanence of relationship between a man and a women that God intended for the human race at its very beginning.

As I outlined this series a few weeks ago, I thought about the various marriages in the Bible. There are many to study.

There is Abraham and Sarah who became parents in old age. But there were times when Abraham “denied” his true relationship with her out of fear. The result was trouble for them and others.

There was Jacob and Rachel. Now Jacob agreed to work for seven years in order to win her hand from her father. But was tricked by his future father-in-law and had to first marry her older sister, Leah, (the custom of that day) and the thorny (and largely unacceptable today) issue of polygamy raised its head along with serious conflict between two sisters.

There is Uriah and Bathsheba. Uriah was an honorable man who refused to enjoy the comfort of her love while on leave from war in obedience to his king, David, who had gotten her pregnant because he was where he shouldn’t have been.