Thoughts on Marriage

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.” –Proverbs 31:10-12. “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” –Hebrews 13:4a (ESV).

I enjoy weddings—the beauty, sacredness and promise of love that surrounds them. God ordained that “man should not be alone” and so He “made an helpmeet for him.” (See Genesis 2:18). The family was the first institution God ordained following the creation.

In the beautiful Garden of Eden the first marriage ceremony was presided over by God Himself. When Adam beheld Eve, the wife God had created for him, he exclaimed:
 

This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23).

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24).

Saturday, October 3, 2015 was the wedding of my eldest grandson, Brian David Jones to his beautiful bride, Amanda Owens. The wedding was the sacred, solemn, beautiful ceremony one likes to attend and to witness. I remembered how Brian David had come, the first grandchild of seven, and from the beginning had been a winsome, bright, engaging little boy, beloved and loveable. Here he stood, a handsome man, mature in years, pledging to “love, honor and cherish” Amanda his bride, “as long as they both should live.” As I enjoyed the solemnity of the vows spoken and the beauty of the ceremony’s setting, I prayed that God would bless the union of Brian David and Amanda and give them love deep enough to transcend challenges and strength strong enough to meet whatever life brought their way.

The lines of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet kept hammering at the edges of my mind and I made the poem a part of my prayer for this newly-wed couple, my beloved grandson and his bride:

           Let me not to the marriage of true minds

           Admit impediments. Love is not love

           Which alters when alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks to tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov’d

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. –William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

May God’s graciousness and love guide and secure this marriage. –Ethelene Dyer Jones 10.04.2015

Work to Honor God

“Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” –Ecclesiastes 9:10a (NKJV)

“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: ‘If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.’ ” -1 Thessalonians 3:10 (NKJV).

Recently I read an article by T. R. McNeal on the theology of work. He stated that God is a working God who worked to create the universe and all that is in it. He works likewise to sustain it. Mankind, created in God’s image, was place on the earth to work. “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15). Labor did not come about due to man’s fall. Man was already working to cultivate the earth and make it produce. After man became rebellious and sinned by partaking of what God told him to leave alone, Adam and Eve were expelled from the beautiful Garden of Eden, and work became complicated. Because of the fall, “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.” (Genesis 3:17b, 19a. NKJV). The commission made to Adam ages ago to work and subdue the earth still remains in force. Today, agriculture is not the main mode of work. Mankind is engaged in work that is physical, social, cultural and spiritual in nature. But whatever we do to make a living, God’s people are to practice integrity in work. We are to work to honor God and to help mankind.

My mother and father were strong proponents of the words from Ecclesiastes 9:10a: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” No shoddiness in work habits and products from labor were allowed. Another adage they practiced, akin to the lesson from “the preacher” in Ecclesiastes: “If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right.” On the farm, we saw living proof of what Paul wrote about in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” Our theology of work also practiced “Give an honest day’s work for a day’s wage.” With these teachings learned early in life given orally and practiced by both precept and example, I gratefully learned the value and necessity for work and that Christians should strive to be honest, conscientious and productive in their work.

Another important aspect of work—whatever we do to make a living—is to view our labor first and foremost as serving God. For a Christian, the primary aim of any type of work is ministry to and for others. Christians may work on a farm, in an office, teach, administer, labor. Jesus taught that we are salt and light, His representatives in the workplace. Think of the difference we can make if we apply a sound theology of work in whatever we do. Spend time thinking about the sacredness of your work and what God expects you to do and to be through your work. Pray that whatever your hands find to do in the work-a-day world that God will be honored and that you and others will be blessed by your labor. At this Labor Day weekend (and every day), thank God for the privilege of work.

–Ethelene Dyer Jones 09.06.2015

Honoring Mothers

Much has been written in the course of time regarding mothers.  Here, at Mother’s Day, 2013, I add my few thoughts to wish all mothers—and all those who honor their own mother and other significant ones who have been in a “motherly” role in their lives a “Happy Mother’s Day.

We see mother mentioned early in Genesis when God created Eve to be a helpmeet for Adam.  He instructed Adam, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife…” (Genesis 2:24, ESV).  Later we read of Adam naming Eve, and of her role as  a mother:  “”The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20).  In the course of time, God gave a commandment concerning the role of children in relationship to parents:  “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Genesis 20:12).  This commandment had a promise for those who obeyed--long life.  I remember my dear grandmother who so honored her parents and other elders that her days on this earth numbered nearly 102 years. The Psalmist joined in praise of mothers, saying, “He (God) gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.  Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 113:9).  The writer of Proverbs added his praise to mothers, saying:  “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old…Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice!” (Psalm 23:22, 25).  In Mary’s “Magnificat”, her Song of Praise soon after the angel’s announcement to her that she would be the mother of the Lord, in the Spirit she said”  “For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name” (Luke 1:49, ESV).

Having a day set aside to honor mothers has a long history.  We can trace its roots back into Greek and Roman times when Greece honored Rhea, wife of Cronus and in Rome Cybela, a “mother” goddess.  “Mothering Sunday” was begun in England in the 1600’s.  In America, Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation as early as 1870 in Boston.  Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia is credited with starting Mother’s Day as we know it, with the first official Mother’s Day event in 1908 to honor her sainted mother, Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis who had started work with mothers to teach them sanitation and better health practices after the Civil War.  Julia Jarvis’s petitions for a special day finally reached the ears of President Woodrow Wilson who signed a resolution May 8, 1914 making the second Sunday in May officially “Mother’s Day.”  Later, Anna Jarvis rued the commercialization of the day, for that had not been her intention.  She wanted to call attention to the important role of mothers and to set aside a day to say thank you to them.

I had an honored and loving mother to whom I am grateful for my early rearing, up through age fourteen.  At that tender teen-aged time in my life, I lost her to a serious illness.  My life was never the same afterward, because I at that age became a sort of surrogate mother to my then eleven-year-old younger brother.  But my having to grow up in a hurry taught me responsibility, appreciation and a sense of developing in maturity and insight that I may not have had otherwise.  I am very grateful that I am privileged to be a mother, a grandmother and a great grandmother.  On Mother’s Day let us honor those faithful women who have made a difference in who we are today.