The Miracle of Marriage

By Josh Patrick, Teaching & Discipleship Minister
Harpeth Christian Church

A few weeks ago I was suffering through watching a romantic comedy with my wife. About halfway through the movie, something hit me… Movies like this always show us the beginning of love stories. The puppy-love stage. A guy meets a girl in an antique bookstore, they’re browsing for the same book, and then it happens. And then the painfully predictable plot unfolds—

Boy gets girl…

Boy loses girl…

Boy gets girl back.

And then the story’s over.

Every now and then they show us the end of a romantic relationship. The elderly couple die in each other arms, or she cares for him as he passes on. And we cry and dream about how that’s going to be us one day with our significant other.

But what is absent from our mass-produced love stories is the middle of the relationship. A healthy marriage isn’t sustained by puppy love and married couples don’t walk into an eternity holding hands on the beach. Real life consists of everyday, mundane moments that are anything but dramatic or sexy. Life is made up of millions of opportunities to take out the trash, wash the dishes, to not say the one clever thing that you know will hurt her, or to play his favorite song because you know he’ll appreciate it. Marriage is an agreement to live all your days together, to let someone matter to you more than anybody else in the world.

That’s what’s behind those stories of older couples who are still in love after decades of doing life together. Seeing these couples moves us deeply because we know the sacrifice that went into those years. These people chose repeatedly to love each other well, not in a mushy, unrealistic way, but in a gritty, self-sacrificial way. The bedrock of marriage is a daily decision to deny yourself. It’s not flashy, and you won’t always feel like doing it, but over the years you work on your sharp edges, and you re-learn how to love each other year after year. At the end of the day, it won’t matter how perfect the beginning of the relationship was. It’s the decades in the middle that will ultimately count.

**Harpeth Christian Church  is hosting a FREE Pizza & Movie Night on April 16th at 5:30pm. “War Room” will be showing on the big screens! Childcare available by student ministry to raise funds for mission trip. Donations accepted. No registration needed – just come out and join us! Click here for more info.

Harpeth Christian Church is located at 1101 Gardner Dr in Franklin (at the southeast corner of Mack Hatcher and Lewisburg Pike)