That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Gen. 2:24)
Someone observed, tongue-in-cheek, that when two people are married, they become one; then they spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out which one!
Although intended to be humorous, there’s a measure of truth to the real-life struggle in a marriage to reconcile differences. Derric Johnson’s I Promise to Love highlights these differences. A couple discusses breakfast options and one likes eggs scrambled hard and firm while the other prefers them soft and fluffy. One squeezes the toothpaste tube from the bottom and the other squeezes it in the middle, which the first considers sadistic and unorganized. One likes to sleep with the window open at night, but the other prefers it to be closed.
You get the picture. Two should be one, but they have difficulty agreeing on which one.
The King James Version translates the first part of the verse, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.” Leave and cleave, loosen and secure. The Hebrew word translated cleave means “to glue, to cling.” The two, though quite different from each other, become glued to each other in spirit, so that you cannot separate them. Theirs is a unit that will not be dissolved. We all know of marriages that came apart. But God’s ideal for you and yours is to have a permanent union.
Pray for married couples you know to have a happy, permanent union.
Ron McClung lives in Fishers, Indiana, with his wife, Carol. He has served The Wesleyan Church for over fifty years and written his weekly column, Positive Perspective, for more than thirty.
© 2020 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
