Hi, Mara.
We’re about to sit down to some lunch. It’s going to be a strange mixture—containing various forms of local food. Oh—there’s the call now. I’ll be back. OK—I’m back. It was good, creatively mixing and loading various veggies and some local hamburger (they call mince) into a tortilla—kind of like a combination of Indian roti and Mexican burrito. The tortilla brand is EL PASO, made in Australia. Interesting. But they are sure expensive (650 vatu, approximately $6.50—for only 6 little tortillas). In fact, everything is expensive. It feels like we’re going through a lot of money here just to eat, let alone do other stuff.
I was able to knock out the deck railing repair yesterday, plus assemble and install a screen for a window off the utility room. In the process, I don’t think I have ever in my life more thoroughly drenched a shirt with sweat. It wasn’t because it was such hard labor. It was just that I was using a body that is not yet conditioned for the tropics.
A group called the INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH use the chapel here on campus for their Sunday services—and do so in English. We walked down the hill less than a hundred yards away and attended there this morning. They were packed—maybe 150 or so. Good service.
Yawn. My 3am rising time is now telling me that it’s time for an old man nap. Be blessed.
Love, Tua.
Here’s another great idea to clearly record in your life notebook, Samara. Although you are not married, there is a high likelihood that you will be some day. You actually have the wonderful opportunity right now to be contoured and shaped toward becoming the delightful “crown” of your future husband’s affections—what he treasures and values most. In so being and doing you are investing not only in benefits to your husband, but benefits to yourself, you own identity, and ultimately, to the One Who made you.
Let me suggest that we look beyond the obvious and consider how this concept is truly a meaningful metaphor to describe your relationship with your Lord and Savior. In that sense, you ARE married. And in that sense, I too am a married woman/wife. That statement could rattle a man’s view of himself. But it’s true—IF we are to accept the validity of the Biblical description that Paul, for example, offers in Ephesians 5:25. Let’s cite it and think about it again: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for HER to make HER holy, cleansing HER by the washing with water through the word…” (Ephesians 5:25-27). In this sense, then, every born-again, blood-bought, God-worshiping, Jesus follower, is a HER—no place for a HIM. Human gender doesn’t matter. So in Christ we are all part of a global HER—HIS Bride, His Church. That is what supremely matters!
Do you see why this inspires me with expanded practical meaning in regards to our FOCUS VERSE? If I have been espoused to Christ, shouldn’t I desire to honor Him by pursuing a character that honors Him—one as noble as I, with His help and provision, can make it? Is Christ honored when I succumb to being and behaving like a “wayward wife”?—one who is less than passionate in this relationship and easily distracted by other lovers or other stuff? To be sure, Jesus did not die for me so that I would become “ho-hum” in this high calling. I have to reason that such an attitude and behavior that fails to recognize my being saved by His love and grace would cause me to be like a “disgraceful wife”—“like decay in His bones.”