FAITH & REFLECTION -- A dozen years ago, a couple asked me if I could provide some "words of wisdom" at their wedding reception. I quickly complied because I was very fond of the couple and marriage is one of my favorite topics.
My focus was (and remains) pre-emptive maintenance. However, the first advisement to them was tongue-in-cheek. The couple's names were Erin and Aaron, so I suggested that to avoid confusion, none of their children should be named after either one of them.
Next, I spoke to them of the resilience and toughness of marriage, comparing marriage to a Timex watch. Timex advertised that their watches could "take a lickin' and keep on tickin'." However, even a Timex can be destroyed, and so can marriage.
I used a personal example about my first car. It was a 1967 Camaro and I loved it! However, I was not very kind to it and it didn't last. I explained that I drove that car very hard and maintained it very little. Inevitably, the car would break down. At these times (at a young age and with an abundance of impertinence and a shortage of patience) I would christen the Chevy with disparaging remarks. However, the problem was not the car, but my passionate driving habits coupled with a lackadaisical maintenance schedule. Similarly, marriages fall apart when they are driven hard and maintained little. I speak with people regularly who want much from marriage, but do little in the way of relational maintenance.
I recall mentioning that too often people enter into marriage as an experiment, rather than as a commitment and then when these relationships disintegrate the marriage institution gets all the bad press. Incidentally, marriages do not fail. People do. I'm not unsympathetic with the struggling, but integrity requires that responsibility be placed where it belongs.
I don't remember what Scripture verses I used on that occasion, but I'm confident that two of them would have been Ephesians 5:21 and 1 Corinthians 13. The Ephesians passage says, "Submit to each other out of respect for Christ." If you give serious consideration to this passage, you will understand that the only legitimate argument that a married couple should have would go something like, "You go first, honey...No, you go first... No, no, you go first...No, no, no, I insist you go first!" The second passage, the "love chapter" of the Bible, provides a practical list of how selfless love should function.
The old adage of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is never more true than in the marriage relationship. And the payoff is superlative!
"...a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one" (Genesis 2:24).