Thoughts Transposed

"God never just sends one sign: He keeps on confirming His course for us with one vision after another. But the reading of His signs is essentially a task for faith, a task for people who are willing to persist in seeking out the correspondence between the external and visible realities of their lives, and the interior weather of their souls, striving always to bring the two into line in order that the kingdom of God might come. For the interior journey is necessarily an exterior journey, the path to God necessarily the path of deepening human relationships. Marriage stands at the very hub of this exciting spiritual dialectic, for it is, as Paul points out, a cameo dramatization of the relationship of the whole church with its Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

- Mike Mason, "The Mystery of Marriage"

This, my friends, is why when someone retorts to me, "You don't need a man, Lauren" I cringe. Because this person clearly does not understand our urban increasing, evermore independent, cyber-ridden, cynical, commitment fearing and increasingly hopeless world. These people don't seem to remember that the very man in Scripture who said that it "better to be alone than to marry" was the very same man who spent chapters more making marriage comparisons to the relationship between Christ and the Church. And, they also have forgotten the verse about iron sharpening iron and how when that iron - the person - is the one we sleep with, eat with, have friends with, work with, have sex with... the irons are sharpened in ways no homeless man in the local shelter can sharpen or your married girlfriend who comes over occasionally for a glass wine and nail polish can sharpen. And, this person who makes this retort has also forgotten Adam and Eve and the Creation story and how even though Adam supposedly had everything He needed to be happy, with the company of God ever-present, a world without sin, and as many animals, flowers, trees, and bushes a man could want Adam, in fact, still was not entirely content. Furthermore, such discontentment was not some sinful, fatal flaw but something created into him and foreseen before him by his Creator.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box, now. But, now I know you'll think twice before making such a comment to me.