I was listening to somebody talk the other week.  I listen to people talk everyday for some part of the time.  But this man was on television.  Since it is my habit to talk to people as they talk on television–keeps things interesting, especially because they cannot interact with me through the box–I was practicing patience by hearing him out.  He was going on about fidelity.  He was making a point about the command in the Bible about not committing adultery.  He didn’t make the command sound appealing.  Not that commands are ever meant to appeal as much as command. 

Still, I thought about sentences I came across when I was researching for a message.  I was looking into stuff about laws and codes and came back to a book from seminary.  In Love Taking Shape, Gilbert Meilaender has several written sermons on the commandments.  Inside the one on the marital commandment, he talks about how the command is a prohibition for the people of Israel.  “You won’t be like those other people,” in other words.  “You will be like this.”  And faithfulness is one of the main values hidden under those strong commands.  Then Meilaender says something else beautiful; he says that the command is not only a prohibition but a promise:

You shall be faithful.  That is a promise.  For the faithful God, the One who never fails to keep covenant, is at work in us and our history, making us what we are not yet: faithful lovers…Our task in the meantime is to let our lives and, if we are married, our marriages reflect the faithfulness of Christ to his bride–trusting the promise buried in the command and spelled out in the story…”

When was the last time you considered that a command, any command, was a promise? 

Dr. Lallene Rector, when she taught Psychology of Religion, said it takes the human brain up to three years to adjust to major life changes.  I’ve told that to almost every couple I’ve met with since hearing it.  I like to remind people that marriage is a major life change.  I like to tell people that it took me about four years before my brain starting coming around to what marriage meant.  Even then I wasn’t adjusted.  Of course, I blame that on being born premature!

When I read Gilbert Meilander’s sermon on “The Marriage Bond” the other week, I thought back to my professor’s words.  Marriage is a change, but being faithful in life is a large adjustment.  You can go through seven straight days and hardly be called to real faithfulness.  But relationships, friendships, and marriages push us into the sometimes difficult world of doing what we go can a week without doing. 

Marriage reminds me everyday of the tension and joy between prohibition and promise.  It reminds me of the courage it takes to be faithful to something, to anything, especially marriage.  It reminds me that courage is always complimented by ability that comes from Someone else working in me.  My commitment to Dawn sinks inside a commitment to God, and God gets busy making me more faithful with each commitment I keep, with each day my brain gets more adjusted, with each year I can say that faithfulness gets harder or easier.

What do you think–about faithfulness, marriage, and things related?