Traded Perfect - for Problems

Genesis 2:23-25

We bought 1&1/2 acres next to our house and we hired some young men who were clearing a lot down the street.  We hired them to remove rocks and boulders from our lot, so that we might use them for landscaping.  These two young men are in college, they work for their dad in the summer and on weekends; Victor is the leader, Victor has one year to go before becoming an Architect.  His brother Sam is younger and he graduated with a double major and is going back to work on his Masters; I was very impressed with these young men.  Sam told me that they did not have time for girls or parties that they still had five younger brothers and sisters to help put through school and that marriage was too important to rush into.

I shared with Sam that I was twenty-three when I married Jan and that I did not have any understanding of the covenant that I had entered into.  The thought of being responsible for myself, much less a young bride, frightened the little boy that inhabited my earthsuit; he could no longer do whatever he wanted.   I shared how fear, caused me to buy so many “bought lessons,” and those lessons came at a very high price.  Often I looked on my young bride as a problem and did not understand that I was the problem, and that she was a blessing from God. 

What happens when you go to the Mall, or what happens when you drive around looking at new houses?  The Mall exposes the wants or needs of your wardrobe, the Mall becomes a “want creator” and so does the new houses, and if you’re not in control of your “feeler” the next thing you feel is a deep need to upgrade.  In my late twenties and early thirties I played that game in my mind, I was married but I still did a lot of comparing my wife to other women, never understanding that Jan was a blessing, and that my view was distorted.  The world promises that new is better, and often after the sales job, our minds, our emotions, will tell our will to choose the new, (dress, boat, or wife) only to regret the cost or to find out that the item or the person, does not meet your needs or requirements.   

We see our society and ourselves as so advanced, but are we?  In Genesis 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”  The serpent took her to the Mall and it was there she and Adam traded perfect for pain and problems.  That is a “bought lesson” that mankind has had to live under, and we are still doing the same thing that Eve and Adam did and it destroys homes and families.  God made clear His design for marriage in Genesis 2:24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice                   http://fromourbackporch.blogspot.com/