Fifty years is a long time! I set in the fellowship hall of our church, celebrating with my lovely wife fifty years of marriage while thinking back over that time. My thoughts went back to the time we first met. Time passes so quickly, and yet I do not say it seemed like yesterday.
I was a young preacher boy of eighteen, and my future wife, Mary (which I had not yet met) was almost seventeen. She attended a revival with her family, which I was preaching. On the third night of those special services, she gave her heart to the LORD – about six months later, we were married. It was a simple wedding as was the custom then and a short honeymoon of one night.
Fifty years later, I am still in the pulpit, and she has been a faithful companion. Four children and eight grandchildren and three of the grand’s are married – we still survive.
It is different now, a different time, a different season, and the way people think seems to be so different. However, I believe we are the same as we were fifty years ago, only more matured in wisdom, which is accumulated only by the knowledge gained by the experience of our time together.
What kept us some has asked? I would have to give credit to only one, and that is the LORD. Marriage life is wonderful and certainly, I was meant to be married.
However, even though it has been and continues to be wonderful, it has not been without its bitter cups of disappointments and discouragements along the way. We found that with the LORD, those disappointments and difficulties can be the glue that holds a marriage together. Honestly, there have been times of trial when we felt helpless, but my wife and I could always turn our hearts and minds to God in prayer – He never failed us!
That may seem simple, but it is the truth. Without the LORD Jesus being the unseen guest in our home and life at all times, we never would have been able to celebrate fifty years of wonderful marriage. A marriage that I believe was ordained from the beginning and brought together by God Himself.
I believe in these troublesome times of confusion and insecurity that God can do the same for anyone that will allow Him to be the predominant one in their lives.
He never failed us, nor will He fail you.
