Rejoice with the wife of your youth

Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, And be embraced in the arms of a seductress? – Psalm 5v18-20

Coming up in January Mary and I will have been married 34 years. When we tell people that they often a look at us in astonishment. People are surprised that a marriage can last that long. Of course we all know of marriages that last much longer than that as well. The sad thing is that couples in their 50s and 60s and 70s and older who are still married to their original spouses would cause surprise.

It seems in many of our societies that traditional marriage is breaking down. I don’t have the statistics in front of me at the moment, but I read in a reliable source recently that less than have of Irish homes consisting of cohabitating are married. If this trend continues the concept of one man and one woman spending their lives together will become even rarer as the years go by.

But God’s standards don’t change. And, in reality, He does know best. There is nothing more precious than a partner with whom we choose to spend the rest of our lives.  You get to a certain point where you start becoming more and more glad that you have someone to grow old with.

I think that’s one of the reasons, apart from the decency and morality and rightness of it, that God tells us to ‘rejoice with the wife of your youth.’ God tells us to be consistently enraptured by her love and embrace.

That’s pretty good advice for keeping a marriage alive isn’t it? Don’t be distracted by all the obvious 

distractions that come along. Rejoice with the wife God gave us when we were young. Keep the enrapture alive as the years go by.

Rejoice that you have someone willing to grow old with you.