Glenn Gregory must have had slender fingers. The wedding ring his wife Barbara slipped on his finger was lost just two months later while he was setting a foundation for their new mobile home. A second wedding ring was lost some time later. The third wedding ring was stored away by Barbara; she wasn’t going to take a chance on him losing another!
Glenn died just a few months ago. His wife hired a man to set a monument to mark his grave at their Henry County, Kentucky farm. As the worker was digging, he spotted something shiny in the soil; it turned out to be the first wedding ring Glenn lost – 63 years earlier.
This story about the Gregory’s should remind us of an important principle. Marriages are not held together by wedding rings or by any other external objects. Marriages are made durable when we safeguard in our hearts the vows we make on the wedding day. The first wedding ring was kept safe in the ground, but the love that prompted the ring was kept safe in the hearts of Glenn and Barbara.
In Malachi 2:14, God rebuked His people for marital sins. “Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” “By covenant” points back to the vows that were made in forming that marriage. For some reason, the vows were forgotten and the marriages were discarded. The wife, by reason of the divorce, was treated treacherously.
Jesus was asked His opinion about breaking a wedding vow. “Is it lawful … for just any reason?” the Pharisees asked Him (Matthew 19:3). Jesus first pointed them to the origin of marriage: “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4,5). He was referring to the first marriage, the joining of Adam and Eve by God’s own design (Genesis 2:21-25).
That design of marriage has not changed through the ages. When Jesus pointed to the Garden of Eden and the first marriage, He was saying, in effect, “This is still the standard.” He went on to clearly answer the Pharisee’s question: “So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6).
Some condense the principle into this simple statement: “One man and one woman for life.” That seems an accurate assessment of what the Son of God taught on the subject.
My wife and I are in our 49th year of marriage. I happen to still have on my left ring finger the gold band she placed on my finger on our wedding day. But if I should lose the ring, the important thing is that I still carry the vow – and the love which prompted the vow – deep in my heart. And I know she feels the same as I do. Our love is safeguarded where it counts the most – in our hearts.
Come to the light God offers! Study His word, the Bible. Worship Him in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss these ideas further.
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Copyright, 2024, Timothy D. Hall
