A Fifty-Year Lease With an Option to Renew

Scripture Reading: John 15:9-17

Today's Treasure:

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you" (John 15:12).

In God timing and in God's plan, I believe in romance. Romance , not fairy tales. There's nothing like love to awaken a soul to realize that if fairies did exist, they told a serious tale. Cinderella soon discovered that Prince Charming could smell a lot like his horse. Snow White sometimes thought she'd rather go home to the seven dwarves. Rapunzel found herself wishing she'd had a crew cut. The princess who kissed the frog recognized some of the same warts on her prince. Love tends to be blind only in the beginning. How else would we take the risk? Oh, but love is worth the risk when our hearts belong to God.

Keith and I have certainly not lived a fairy tale. Both our hearts were so scarred by life that neither of us had a clue how to love. We fought like cats and dogs, and each of us was so miserable at times that we felt we could not bear it. There were seasons when we felt absolutely no love toward one another. At times we were certain that life-or the other person-had finally killed whatever affection we had. But that's the thing about God. He can resurrect the dead. He alone can resurrect the dead. I have no clue how couples without Him quicken the love again after the death of a heart. It takes something divine to roll the stone away and call a Lazarus relationship back from the dead. It takes forgiveness . A celestial trait invading a terrestrial heart. Love is just lust until it has been seasoned by time and refined by forgiveness. God created life and knows what makes it work. Therefore, He insists on two things above all else: that we love as we've been loved (John 15:12) . and that we forgive as we've been forgiven (Ephesians 4:32). In other words, "I have poured My life into you. Dip into the deepest well and offer another drink."

Not just once. And not just in the crises. But as a practice. In the little things before they get to be big things. In the big things so we can go back once again to the little things. God calls upon the loved not just to love but to be loving. God calls upon the forgiven not just to forgive but to be forgiving. These are the things that cause our lives to bear the very witness of God because they are beyond man. Boy, have Keith and I done a lot of forgiving. And don't get the idea that I have done more than he. Marriage has been hard for both of us, but nothing has shown us the sustaining power of God's unfailing love like it.

Many years ago our college friends said they voted us the couple least likely to succeed. Tragically, many of the marriages of the far more suitable couples we knew have disintegrated, but the stubborn love of Jesus Christ kept us hanging on. Had Keith and I remained those two people who walked down the aisle together, we would simply be a statistic. He and I often laugh about the pleadings of one of his groomsmen the day we married. "Keith, I really hope you won't let marriage change you." Oh, brother . Through the years God has tended us, broken us, and mended us until we've found ourselves to be married to people hardly resembling the ones we met at the altar twenty-something years ago. We are convinced that all we did then was fall in love with the faintest glimpse of who God was going to make us. He is still making us.

As Keith and I contemplated the seriousness of marriage, we realized that it was the "until death do you part" clause that unsettled us. In order to make a lifetime prospect a little more bearable, we decided before we married that we were simply signing a fifty-year lease with an option to renew. During the ceremony we smiled at each other when the pastor read the clause, and we replaced it mentally with our own. We've never forgotten our deal. When we get into a fuss, one of us will invariably say, "OK. That's it. I'm not going to renew my lease." It rarely fails to bring a grin to a grinless moment. When one of us does something really thoughtful, the other commonly says, "That renewal option is really looking good right about now." Strangely, when we married, a lifetime seemed far too long. Now, as the years pass so quickly and we realize we won't be married in heaven, a lifetime doesn't seem long enough. The thought of our inevitable earthly good-bye brings tears to us both.

We are each other's gift in a way that no one else can have us. We laugh together until we cry. We cry together until we laugh. We have slow danced a million miles on the linoleum while supper boiled over on the stove.

We are a miracle. Until death does us part or our fifty-year lease expires, I'll remember the day I realized just what a miracle we were. Melissa and several of her friends were in her room listening to a country-western station on the radio, talking a hundred miles an hour. I was directly downstairs in the kitchen eavesdropping not only on every word they were saying, but every word they were listening to. All of a sudden, a song came on the radio and Melissa blurted out, "Everybody be quiet! I love this song!" I strained with interest to hear the nature of the song my child "loved." As all the jabbering ceased, I heard her say, "This song reminds me of." I was nearly slain by her next words: ".my parents." It was a love song. I stood in the kitchen and cried. Thank you God, Thank you.

Lord, if You God graciously allow us to live out our "lease" and grow old together, we will undoubtedly have challenges ahead. How I pray that we have developed a love that can no longer be killed.but if perchance we haven't, Christ's eternal voice still shouts, "Lazarus, come forth!" May our hearts bear the marks of resurrection. I pray that we would echo your laughter and dance our shiny linoleum dull while dinner boils over and our skeptics are proved wrong. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.

Keith and Beth celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary

Adapted from Feathers From My Nest, by Beth Moore, pages 77-80. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001. Used by permission.