Umma and abba are constantly fighting but striving to love, forgive and reconcile as Jesus commands.
Is this what marriage ultimately teaches - gospel love? Learning to forgive and love a best friend who often plays the dual role of enemy? After all, the person you love most has the ability to hurt you the most. It's within this context that hearts are put through what feels like a furnace.
Perhaps we are all given chunky metal box shaped hearts when we begin. Marriage puts that metal through a furnace and slowly shapes it. The fire reveals what hearts and professed "love" are really made of. When things get bad and the fire pummels the metal heart, its true nature is revealed - often, a rigid and unyielding nature.
Through the ups and downs of marriage, somehow, Christ is at work and chipping at this metal heart. You start with this rough, unwieldy piece of metal but it's in the later years, instead of a metal heart you find yourself holding a metal cross with battle signs of love - you're just a little closer to loving as Jesus did.
In this life of faith with another person, the oscillation between selfishness and grace can seem never-ending. It's an upward battle, but eventually the gospel wins. Hearts constantly surrendered to Christ are transformed and made more into His image. Marriage makes us more like Jesus. (I'm not married, but this is what I see in umma and abba).
Reminded of this question- am I ready to love? to have my heart contoured and deepened and taken to places I've never been? This year I caught a glimpse of my heart and it is still an unpolished dainty little metal box. I have such a long way to go.
Despite the unyielding, wild nature of my heart, the craftsman's work is beautiful. I look forward to knowing You more through this person (whoever he is).
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