Value

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 I've realized the last several weeks how desperately I'm in love with my wife Laura. It just seems like here recently I am catching myself in these times of uncontrollable laughter and contentment where I just catch myself saying..."I love this woman!" Her faithfulness to me and in me blows me away! Her purity and love is so deep and real I swear I can taste it and smell it. As I scan the horizon of our life together, her devotion really magnify's my failures! I really do suck @ this whole husband thing! I mean, I do my best but I fail in so many ways. And yet, she sticks by me...heck, she's my biggest fan! Then, I see these same attributes of Laura displaying themselves through my daughters. Their love for life and me AMAZES me! In spite of all my colossal failures with them, they have this never ending love for me that makes me thank God everyday for these three displays of God's love for me. What would this life be like without these beautiful people around me? No, what would this life be like without the beautiful people around all of us? The reality of all this is that God gives us these relationships as a picture of His love for us. Are you married? It's a picture! Do you have kids? It's a picture! Do you have a good friend or many good friends? It's a picture! Do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or fiancé? Make no mistake...it's a picture of the relationship God designed for you to have with Him through His Son Jesus the Christ. May we always keep this picture in mind when we start to take our spouse for granted...or when we don't take advantage of every opportunity we have with our kids...or when you guys push the envelope with your girl and you misuse the intimate gift of sex, which just so happens to be the pinnacle expression that a man and a woman share as a married couple to display this picture of the relationship between Christ and His people. Sex is a gift from God to us but only within the bounds of marriage...or you girls use this same sex to try and fill the emptiness in your soul that only God can fill...or you use it to entice that ultimate guy to stick around...but it won't work! It never has and it never will.Theses relationships are not cheap! Guard them and nurture them. They are given to us as gifts. May we realize the love we have around us and may we be this same love to others!