QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office…. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

“God makes your marriage indissoluble. ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’. God joins you together in marriage; it is His act, not yours.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), to his niece on the announcement of her wedding, written while imprisoned for opposition to Adolf Hitler

“Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve’s being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honor upon that sex, as the glory of the man, 1 Cor. 11:7. If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined….”

“That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

~Matthew Henry (1662-1714) in his commentary on Ephesians 5:21-25

“A good marriage is one where each partner secretly suspects they got the better deal.”

~Unknown

“To keep your marriage brimming with love in the wedding cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up.”

~Ogden Nash (1902-1971), American poet

“Never laugh at your wife’s choices. You are one of them.”

~Unknown

SERMON PASSAGE

selected passages from Proverbs (ESV)

Proverbs 2

1 My son, if you receive my words

and treasure up my commandments with you…

5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God….

16 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,

from the adulteress with her smooth words,

17 who forsakes the companion of her youth

and forgets the covenant of her God….

Proverbs 5

15 Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

17 Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

18 Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth….

Proverbs 12

4 An excellent wife is the crown of her husband,

but she who brings shame

is like rottenness in his bones.

Proverbs 17

1 Better is a dry morsel with quiet

than a house full of feasting with strife.

Proverbs 18

22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing

and obtains favor from the Lord.

Proverbs 19

14 House and wealth are inherited from fathers,

but a prudent wife is from the Lord.

Proverbs 31

10 An excellent wife who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels.

11 The heart of her husband trusts in her,

and he will have no lack of gain.

12 She does him good, and not harm,

all the days of her life….

27 She looks well to the ways of her household

and does not eat the bread of idleness.

28 Her children rise up and call her blessed;

her husband also, and he praises her:

29 “Many women have done excellently,

but you surpass them all.”

30 Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

31 Give her of the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the gates.

Proverbs 24

3 By wisdom a house is built,

and by understanding it is established;

4 by knowledge the rooms are filled

with all precious and pleasant riches.

Proverbs 14

26 In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence,

and his children will have a refuge.

27 The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,

that one may turn away from the snares of death.