25th Anniversary

Jackie and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this week.  It is really hard to believe that it has been 25 years. Time doesn't really seem to matter much anymore as it passes so quickly.

A friend from Japan just contacted me this week and I realized that he had taken me on a tour through the southern part of Tokyo before Jackie and I were blessed with our oldest daughter.  That tour seems like it was just yesterday, another reminder that time passes quickly.

A friend from work was married just this past Saturday reminding me that the duration of a marriage is not nearly as significant as the foundation of the marriage.

As I am writing this, our three children are all at youth camp in Hardin, KY.  They are spending time with some people that we have known and trusted for many years to teach absolute truth from an eternal perspective.

I am proud of all three children as they are making choices that will affect the rest of their lives, just like Jackie and I do every day.

In the scope of all things eternal, 25 years is really just a fleeting moment.  My prayer is that our children will be able to understand holy matrimony way better than we do one day.  Jackie and I have friends that can appreciate this without ever being married to anyone but Jesus Christ.

Jackie and I were blessed to have been raised by families that understand words like love, faith and hope and how a relationship with Jesus Christ and accountability within a community can make 50th Wedding Anniversaries as achievable as 25th Wedding Anniversaries.

As we celebrate for a few days looking back 25 and forward 25, the  time that seems most significant is now.  That has always been the case for the two of us, for better or for worse.

We are planning to meet our children in Louisville at a wedding that is significant to all of us.  As Josh and I have been meeting this past few months, we have been touched on the difference between the titles of bride and wife.  They are both significant.

Approaching a wedding or an anniversary or just another day, a marriage has just as much need for bride and groom as it does man and woman or husband and wife.

Your God Is Too Small

When Jackie and I left Charlotte, NC for the opportunities that awaited us in Lexington, KY, my Sunday School teacher gave me a book that he thought I would enjoy.  I read it immediately and appreciate Tommie Mull for giving it to me.

In 1989, I thought the perspective was timeless because J.B. Phillips was writing down truths in 1961 that were relevant to the events and technology of 1989.

On a recent hiking trip in NC, I decided to re-read this book and have determined it still to be timeless in 2011.

C.S. Lewis wrote the Screwtape Letters to help us see how demons are restricted, limited in scope, and how their tactics to speak to us from time to time in the first person as though they were us.  A fictional piece that aligned with the truth.

J.B. Phillips works from a different direction.  He lists several destructive views of God that we have created in our own finite minds that keep us from understanding the limitlessness of God.  Those views are often a result of good experiences with people that have been inspiring and helpful to us.

I'll list a few of those destructive associations that we have made between a limitless God and a limited image of God.

• Resident Policeman
• Parental Hangover
• Grand Old Man
• Meek and Mild
• Absolute Perfection
• Heavenly Bosom
• God-in-a-box
• Managing Director
• Second-Hand God
• Perennial Grievance
• Pale Galilean
• Projected Image
• Assorted