John Piper’s This Momentary Marriage has a lot of great, biblical things to say about marriage. If you are married and you haven’t read it, you should read it. For my single friends, there’s a pretty good chapter on the purpose and advantages of being single in there as well. If you don’t read the whole book, at least read that chapter. The book is free online and $5 in print.
Ok, now that I have shamelessly promoted John Piper and his book and website, I feel better about my upcoming gripe.
The book is called This Momentary Marriage. That’s the title because marriage is temporary, according to Piper. It’s a worldly relationship designed and ordained by God, but it’s still just a temporary thing. In other words, no marriage in heaven! He bases this on, well, the Gospel. In Matthew 22 and Mark 12, Jesus talks about how in the resurrection people aren’t married or given in marriage.
My first thought – LAME! I want to live with my wife in heaven. I’ve only been married for like two months, but I got married for a reason. I really love my wife, and it seems like a bummer that it will just end. We’ve got a pretty good thing going on here. My second thought – Ok, how do I use some rhetorical gymnastics to wiggle out of these words in the Gospel? I couldn’t figure anything good out. What I did figure out is that I had to reevaluate my own feelings and perceptions.
First of all, I forgot that heaven is going to be pretty dang good. I mean, it’s heaven. Even the best parts of our world are only sneak previews of what is to come. (I Corinthians 2:9, Ephesians 3:20) Second, I say/do a lot of dumb things here on Earth. For instance:
Example: I got us lost in a cave. My bad!
That weak sauce won’t happen to heaven. Instead of messing up when I try to express myself and know Sam (and all of you), we’ll know each other better instead of worse. I’ll love her better instead of worse. Third, we’ll still know each other in heaven. (Matthew 8:11, Luke 9:30,33) Finally, I forgot that Sam is not mine. I forgot that love does not insist on its own way. Even if marriage ends, love doesn’t. Since God is eternal, and since God loves Sam, God’s protection and care and guidance of Sam never ends. Mine will, but his won’t. So, I should defer to God’s wisdom instead of my own. That’s settled.
Still, I hope our Heaven Townhouses are next to eachother. Or maybe we’ll be roommates or ride tandem bikes or something. I would like that.
My husband and I have promised to play star wars for a thousand years… can’t wait for force push him around the universe!
cheers
the Mrs.
Hey, the Mrs! I hope the force push promises were included in your vows. Also, I’m looking forward to keeping up with your blog – love the quotes page.
Seeing as how we won’t be married anymore, perhaps in heaven we can finally move into the Team Extreme house we used to talk about. Just throwing that out there.