This little meme went through my facebook feed and kind of got me in the gut. Convicting, indeed. I absolutely do believe this, “marriage is a gift from God, the quality of our marriage is a gift from us to Him.”
I think that applies to many things even beyond marriage, life in general for example. God gives us the gift, what we make out of it is what we give Him back.
There is a huge caveat here however, we are a bit like children on mother’s day, the way they totally trash the kitchen trying to make you breakfast, or the way they present you with the lopsided sticky card all glued together. Do we parents love these precious and imperfect gifts? You betcha.
Our heavenly Father also loves our deeply flawed, imperfect gifts. We honor Him when we set our lives down before Him, no matter what they look like on the outside. Lord, I offer you my hot mess with a humble heart, my train wreck of mistakes and imperfections……
To offer up one’s aches and pains, one’s frustrations and disappointments, that too is an offering. What makes those sticky little gifts from our children so precious, so valuable to us parents, is the heart behind them.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
This is great, I really like the Mother’s Day analogy.
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Lol! When we give God our best, He’s not getting much is He? Fortunately, like the messy half cooked eggs and burnt toast we made mom on Mother’s day as kids, God lovingly enjoys it anyway. =)
Great post IB!
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Yes it is and it is a tough lesson I am learning.
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Thank you for reading and for the reblog. Much appreciated. 🙂
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Great analogy…
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Great insights! Henri Nouwen wrote: “Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other but a call for two people to witness together to God’s love. The basis of marriage is not mutual affection, or feelings, or emotions and passions that we associate with love, but a calling, a vocation. It is to understand that we are elected to build together a house for God in this world.”
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Thank you, that’s a great quote 🙂
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Indeed, those ‘are important to the Father. I so hope that many who read that will receive the ‘heart’ behind it and come to a revelation from God that it is precisely those sticky little gifts’ that He delights in when He asks us to ‘pick up your cross’ and follow Him. Too many have stressed the actual SUFFERING of Christ related to His cross and thereby think that God requires us to likewise suffer. But the cross was Christ’s specific earthly mission. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” – 1Jn. 3:8. We as believers are to follow Christ’s example of heart; but ONLY HIS DEATH on the cross destroyed the works of the devil. He is THE Savior; we are not called to be little saviors. The cross we ‘bear’ is the humility and empathy that ‘nailed’ Christ to His cross. Physical nails could NOT keep Christ on the cross – only His surrendered will did. Absolutely, “To offer up one’s aches and pains, one’s frustrations and disappointments, that too is an offering”. Peace!
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Sweet. Very true. And may we not live our days anxious about the quality of our sacrifice but, with all our hearts, minds, strength, souls, long for, love, delight in and press in to our loving Father, our compassionate Great High Priest, our sweet and patient Counselor and guide. Got a good one here, sweetie! ♡♡♡!
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Thank you,much appreciated. 🙂
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Amen. Uplifting too.
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