Sean and I only dated for a little while before we got engaged. God had called us to get married, and so we said yes to God and to each other. The future was full of uncertainties, but we knew through our past life experiences that God had never forsaken us as long as we walked in the centre of His will.
And we asked God to give us love. As God’s love poured out into our hearts, our love for each other deepened everyday. During our engagement period, we only got to see each other once or twice a week. Since we lived on opposite sides of town, we tried to meet at a central location, usually at the parking lot of some strip mall. When we saw each other, we’d just run toward each other.
Two years after the engagement, we still run toward each other whenever we are reunited after a day’s work or time apart. As we come back to and rest in each other, peace and consolation would fill our hearts and quiet us down, as worries, stress, and tiredness of the world strangely fade away. Marriage is a little foretaste of Heaven.
But still, being marriage-minded does not come naturally to me. By God’s grace I am gaining a deeper understanding of God’s unrelenting, forgiving, and selfless love, as well as man’s innate rebellion toward God and His decrees. Marriage is a perpetual training camp where I learn and live out God’s definition of love as in 1 Corinthians 13. It is also where God moulds my character to do His current and future work. I do not know about the future work; the only thing that’s required of me in this regard is obedience. But I do know about the current work – it is my daily walk with God – to be moulded by Him and to be a helpmate for Sean.
Sean and I are both insistent. We stubbornly commit to our marriage (because God said so), just like how we have stubbornly followed Jesus our Father, Lord, and Saviour. And just like how we run toward each other in love, we are daily running to God with reckless abandon. This is life; this is what we do. We just want to run, run, and run toward the arms of our Heavenly Father until the day that we finally see Him, when we can find our eternal rest and joy.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.