Marriage Matters

A popular monthly magazine ran a regular feature piece each month entitled Can This Marriage Be Saved?  Each installment was a litany of relational woes: temper, control, immaturity, lack of communication, or general human cussedness.

I thought then as I do now that the answer to the monthly queries, can this marriage be saved, was just about always a resounding YES!  For, “With God all things are possible.”

As a Christian pastor for over 45 years I have found the number one cause of divorce to be laziness. Such sloth was put to me once quite eloquently by a 29-year-old plumbing contractor wanting to divorce his wife of eleven years. He growled, “Yeah, I hear you. I know our marriage needs work but it ain’t worth it. It’s just too much trouble.” What this bonehead didn’t realize is that divorce is a pain that goes on and on and on in your life. In your children. In your extended family. In society. And in God’s own heart.

Psychiatrists point out a normal range divorce takes a minimum of five years hard work to get over. And then you have nothing to show for it but a dead relationship. But if you’d put that same five years’ effort into fixing your relationship, you’d have a God-pleasing love that lives well for all involved.

Bottom line is: If you’ve got a marriage that doesn’t work, it is because you’ve got a husband and wife who are not working. So quit being lazy. Fix it. There is no habit or ignorance or bad character that can resist the rising tide of two people who want their marriage to work and are willing to really study, talk, receive counsel, pray, hope and work it out.  Yes, I said it again. Work.

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.