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God has a sense of humour, that much I am convinced of. The most recent evidence of this has got to be firing up John Piper’s Daily Devotional, Solid Joys, to find out that today’s devotional had marriage firmly in its sights.
The humour was because S and I had just had our first spat of sorts the night before. At the nexus of this spat was a difference in opinion as to where we were on the relationship continuum. I was of the opinion that she needed to provide a response that defined what we were - being just really good friends or people in an active relationship that had marriage as it’s end goal. Her contention was that the fact that she gave up time and energy to meet up with me and do stuff suggested that there was firm interest on her part, but that time was required to get to a place where she could formally say ‘Yes’ to my entreaties.
Therein lay the concern, the sense that we were on different pages, my head and heart being far down the road compared to her. This was particularly concerning particularly as one of her main reasons was holding off was that she was in a place of getting to know me better; hardly the most ringing of endorsements.
As with matters like this, there wasn’t necessarily a solution to be had - our two positions were sufficiently distant to be non-compatible. In the end, I did decide to let the matter rest, given the fact that a ‘forced’ decision is hardly worth the air that accompanies it. I did spend the night seething, with very little sleep, going over the conversation in all its gory details in my mind.
Reading Ephesians 5:25-30 was thus a jolt of sorts, a reminder as to what this should be all about - loving sacrificially, considering one’s spouse as oneself and looking to Christ’s love for the church as an example.
Suitably chided then I suppose, and perhaps one more little data point in what is becoming a compelling case that S is the one - even my devotional is on her side.