J.I. Packer introduces the book by saying that if the
author, a recently married student of his who wanted to be a writer, had spoken
to him about using marriage as the theme of his first book, he would have
pointed out that:
'Marriage...is a terribly difficult topic on which to
write wisely and well...that the Christian world is already full of bad books
in marriage...that young authors rarely write with any depth about
relationships anyway...' etc.
However, Mike Mason did not consult him about what he
planned to do, went ahead and wrote the book and the result, according to J.I.
Packer, was an outstanding achievement:
Rarely...has a new book roused in me so much enthusiasm
as has the combination of wisdom, depth, dignity, and glow - I don't
know what else to call it - that I find in these chapters...
Their tone quality, resonating as it does off the Bible
as its sounding board, is richer than we are used to...
This is one of those books that you need to go back and
mull over. I've underlined so many parts of this book and there's so much I
could share but at risk of transcribing the whole thing, I'll limit myself to a
few quotes:
A marriage, or a marriage partner, may be compared to a
great tree growing right up through the center of one's living room. It is
something that is just there, and it is huge, and everything has been built
around it, and wherever one happens to be going - to the fridge, to bed, to the
bathroom, or out the front door - the tree has to be taken into account. It
cannot be gone through; it must respectfully be gone around. It is somehow
bigger and stronger than oneself. True, it could be chopped down, but not
without tearing the house apart. And certainly it is beautiful, unique, exotic:
but also, let's face it, it is at times an enormous inconvenience.
What is most unique about the tenacious fidelity of
marriage is that it allows for such a really brutal amount of
"sharpening" to take place, yet in the gentlest way imaginable. Who
ever heard of being sharpened against a warm, familiar body of flesh? Only the
Lord could have devised such an awesomely tender and heartwarming means for men
and women to be made into swords.
The Lord God made woman out of man's side and closed up
place with flesh, but in marriage He reopens this empty, aching place in man
and begins the process of putting the woman back again...
Marriage involves a continuous daily renewal of a
decision which, since it is of such a staggering order as to be humanly
impossible to make, can only be made through the grace of God.
To put it simply, marriage is a relationship far more
engrossing than we want it to be. It always turns out to be more than we
bargained for. It is disturbingly intense, disruptively involving, and that is
exactly the way it was designed to be.
The Mystery of Marriage was first published in 1985 by
Multnomah Books.
4 comments:
I love these quotes, and they are certainly true.....I love trees so the first quote was particularly poignant.
Have a blessed day,
Ginger
This sounds like a deep, thought-provoking book. Thank you for giving me a little peek into it!
I read this book twenty years ago and have never forgotten the tree in the living room image. Thanks for the reminder. I'm thinking it would be good for a re-read.
Must read!!
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