Food for Thought

I'm currently reading Covenant Marriage by Fred Lowery. My soon-to-be-married friend Bethany recommended it to me and lent me her copy. I'm enjoying it and getting so much out of it that I decided I needed to order my own copy so that I can highlight and underline "the good stuff" for myself, pass it on to Travis when I'm done with it, and keep it around to spark conversations, serve as a reference, and inform the marriage for which we are steadily preparing. (Related aside: we have our first pre-marital counseling session tomorrow night.)

So far I'm about half-way through the book. Lowery's thesis is this: American society views marriage as a contract. God designed marriage as a covenant. Understanding the difference, and deciding how you will view and approach your marriage, makes all the difference. Basic, but pretty profound at the same time.

I look forward to finishing the book and perhaps posting a more thorough review here later, but for now I wanted to post a nugget from Chapter 5 that particularly stood out to me as I read during the train ride from Wheaton to Chicago Monday evening to meet Travis for our consultation with the DJ. It's a quote from David Jeremiah that Lowery inserts in his discussion of "where it all started" in Genesis.

The man is restless while he misses the rib that was taken out of his side. The woman is restless until she gets under man's arm from where she was taken. It is humbling to the woman to know that she was created for the man, but it is to her glory to know that she alone can complete him. Likewise it is humbling to the man to know that he is incomplete without the woman, but it is to his glory to know that the woman was created for him.