Daily Devotions
The Math of Marriage
Reading for March 26th: Ruth 1-4
But Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."
Ruth 1:16-17
The math of marriage is simple: two become one. But what does it mean to become one?
It means you lose all sense of your personal identity. You no longer think in terms of "me" and "I" but of "we" and "us." It's no longer about YOUR dreams or YOUR goals. All of those thoughts have been replaced with thoughts about what you and your mate will accomplish together.
To think in this way is radical in this day and age. We value the self above all else. We are taught from an early age to not let anyone or anything get in the way of our personal dreams. But the biblical model of marriage (the two become one) demands that we completely transform our perspective.
This is a good thing. This model for marriage teaches us that the world does not revolve around us. It forces us to submit our will to a higher calling and to lose all sense of self. Ultimately, it moves us closer to the way we must think if we are to be joined in marriage to our Savior (see Eph 5:22-33).
Father God, discipline us in our marriages to think of higher goals and higher dreams than personal ones. Help us to lose ourselves in our marriages so that we might find our true life in Christ.
