Today's Scripture Reading (November 19, 2023): Nehemiah 10
When I graduated from High School, I
chose to go to a local University located about an hour away from home. However,
in the years immediately preceding that decision, there had been a concerted
effort to get me to attend a Christian College a thousand kilometers away.
Sometimes, the efforts to convince me to attend the Christian College were
almost comedic. I remember one night when a musical group from the college
showed up at my local church, and I found myself the center of attention from
the band members trying to convince me that the Christian College was the place
to go. Obviously, someone had tipped them off to the campaign being waged to
get me to change my mind and go to the sponsoring college.
But my mind was made up. I felt like
some of the fictitious characters in recent television advertisements for
Medicare Advantage; "I'm not going." (You can insert the attitude.)
And I didn't. At least, not at first. I went to the local University and thought
I had put that chapter of my life behind me. But my first year at University
didn't go as planned, and so, for my second year, I actually went to that
Christian College.
Christian Colleges, and probably a
lot of other post-secondary places for education, often get a bit of a reputation
for being places where people pair off and marry. Misogynist jokes are told
about women only going to these colleges to get their MRS degree, but I made it
clear that that was not going to happen to me. I had no intention of going to
this college and coming away married. But I did meet a girl there, and no, she
was not there to get her MRS degree, but we did begin to date, and eventually,
we got married. Apparently, I am not very good at doing what I say I am going
to do, but that is another story. The marriage has lasted for the past 42 years
and counting.
I think that one thing we miss when
we are young is how much that person we choose to go through life with will
shape the lives we lead. I know that that is true for me. Back in college, I
could not have imagined how vital this girl would be to every aspect of my
life. We don't understand how our marriages and children will shape how life is
lived and what we do. And I can't imagine how messed up my life would have been
without this girl and her guidance from a college I had never planned on
attending. But sometimes, it is something that we don't see until much later.
In Nehemiah's day, it was the parent's
job to choose their child's spouse. With the importance that marriage holds
over the rest of our lives, maybe that is not such a bad practice. And so, the
parents promised Nehemiah that they would not choose spouses for their children
from outside the Jewish community. The fear was that these spouses would lead
their children away from God, and Judah would disappear the same way that
Israel had disappeared generations earlier.
Marriage is more important than we
sometimes realize. Choosing the right person will either set us up or destroy
us. Nehemiah hoped that choosing from within the community would at least begin
the process of helping the marriages of these children to set them up to be the
spiritual and intellectual giants that the nation would need as they proceeded
to re-establish the country.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Nehemiah
11
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