Friday, November 5, 2010

BEING IN LOVE

This business of falling in and out of love. Everybody does it, you know. Sometimes before, they get married, but always after wards. Modern folks simply bug out of the marriage, if they feel no obligation to keep vows - vows made foolishly, they believe. There is something to be said for making an adult choice and sticking with it. “Being in love,” wrote C.S Lewis in Mere Christianity, is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all …… In fact, the state of being in love usually does not last …… If you are looking for some kind of feeling that’s consistent day in day out, forget it. Nevertheless, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love ….. is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask and receive from God ….. The kind of love that sustains a marriage is God given, but also a daily choice. Both partners can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep their promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it”. You remember the vision that “being in love” gave you of what that person was. You found no fault in him or her. I think it is a special gift of vision, the power to see for a little while what God meant when He made that person. You find after marriage, that the person is in fact a sinner, has flaws you never suspected. Then you try to remember what the vision showed you. Thank God for it, and treat him or her with the sort of respect due one who will some day manifest most gloriously the image of God.

By Elisabeth Elliot

1 comment:

  1. This post has said it all: when you're married, you don't always have that 'gushy' feeling although you love the person. Many people divorce because they stop having that feeling and I think it's because they don't understand this principle.

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