Marriage customs in other cultures may mystify us. My student from Ghana told me that a marriage proposal in his country was insured by giving a gift to the parents of the potential bride. What kind of gift? A cow. When he told me that I said, “How interesting. Well, the young man who is dating my daughter has a herd of nineteen Hereford heifers.” Sincerely, the pastor from Ghana asked, “How many cows would he have to give you to marry your daughter?” “He will need to get more cows,” I answered. That boy is now gone. Not enough cows!
Hearing the story of an “arranged marriage” for Isaac and Rebekah sounds odd to our twenty-first-century ears. Instead of finding a wife among the Canaanites, Abraham sent a servant back to his relatives to find a wife for Isaac. The servant stopped at a well and asked that a young woman would water the camels he had brought on the journey. Rebekah became the perfect answer to his prayer. Upon hearing the story, the family asked Rebekah if she would go back to Isaac and she said she would.
Wait. So many questions. She had never seen Isaac? How did she know they were a match? How could this marriage ever work out? One of my prayer partners posited that arranged marriages likely have about as good a chance of working as our pattern. Think about our marriage customs from the perspective of outsiders. Melanie and I lit a unity candle from candles our families lit. Then we blew out those candles leaving only the unity candle burning. “What does this mean,” somebody asked me. “No more old flames,” I answered.
We repeated our vows after Pastor R. B. Baker: “Until death alone shall part us.” We made a covenant in the presence of God and our families that we would never be separated by anything except death. How can a 21-year-old and a 20-year-old make a commitment for a lifetime? What did we really know? It is mind-boggling. But we knew the scriptures and we knew God. Nobody told us all that would happen along the way. But there has been grace for each trial. I am grateful to God for Melanie. With Robert Browning, we still believe, “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.” We are keeping our promises and God is keeping his. The early years of life together lead to the best years later in life. Every night we put the dogs in their crates with a song we made up, “I’ve got a little treat for you.”
Marriage is never easy. Isaac and Rebekah waited twenty years for children. Favoritism threatened the fabric of their home. The challenges of blending two lives were as hard then as it is today. But God was faithful. My friend Calvin Miller ended his sermon, “And the camels smiled.”
A Casting Crowns song from a few years ago captures the hope for marriage in struggling homes:
“It's going to take much more than promises this time.
Only God can change our minds.
Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete.
Could we just be broken together?
If you can bring your shattered dreams, and I'll bring mine.
Could healing still be spoken and save us?
The only way we'll last forever is broken together.”
