“[In marriage], Therefore a man shall leave his father
and his mother and hold fast to his wife,
and they shall become one flesh.”
(Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5; Ephesians 5:31, ESV)
Although C.S. Lewis wasn’t married at the time he wrote Mere Christianity (I recommend this book greatly!), he described marital oneness and love with amazing insight:
“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as single organism – for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact – just as one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined…
What we call ‘being in love’ is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us… It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last; principle can last; habits can last, but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairly-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is take to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were.
Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense – love as distinct from ‘being in love’ is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parties ask, and receive, from God.
They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ fist moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”
(Quote from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958). Page 81, 84-85).
What an insight!
THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.
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