Month: February 2019

Why Weddings? Why Marriage?

Posted on by Karyn Jeffrey

Weddings are so romantic! From the small and simple to the grand and elaborate, everyone seems to think the ceremony and celebrations are the focus. Very few give serious thought to the vows and relationship the two parties are entering as they “get married.” Marriage in the 21st Century is in a really strange place. As Valentine’s Day came and went this year I couldn’t help noticing how it always brings out the “aw, isn’t that romantic?!” soft news stories on local TV channels. There are stories of unusual proposals and folks finding the lost love of their lives after years of being separated by choices and circumstances all designed to elicit warm fuzzy emotions from viewers. But an interesting turn in our local reporting the other day got me stirred up to think about marriage in America. The news anchors shared the interesting and, to me, rather alarming statistics about it. Back in the 1960’s nearly 75% of Americans were married and most married in their early 20’s. By contrast, today only about 50% of Americans are married and most are now waiting until their late 20’s or early 30’s to tie the knot. Reasons for not being married include “not finding the right person” (60%), “waiting to be financially stable” (40%), and 20-30% are “not ready to settle down.”

Committing to one person for the rest of one’s life is a sobering and daunting undertaking and we rightly are nervous about it. But despite the expected “rough spots” married people plow into, it is true that marriage has great benefits for the participants and society at large. Stable marriages develop stable families which contribute dramatically to a stable society. Shared financial efforts and tax breaks are part of the benefit package. Statistically married people have better mental health and live longer, healthier lives. So what is it about the institution of marriage that is becoming so hard, so undesirable and so avoided or abandoned?

I would lay the blame at the foot of the Church and consequently the culture. The two are inextricably linked because “ideas have consequences.” What we believe, especially about God, directs our thinking and actions in every way and that is especially true in our ideas about marriage.

I am convinced that the Church is primarily responsible for the low view our culture has of marriage. Since about the mid-20th Century the theologians and pastors have begun succumbing to the lies about Holy Scripture. Many began to depart from the conviction that the Word of God is authoritative, particularly regarding human sexuality and the relations ships between men and women. Compromise has crept into the Church regarding what is plain in Scripture about sexual purity before marriage and fidelity within it. The efforts of churches to be “seeker-friendly” has become a placation of the lost and self-absorbed by ignoring or changing the awkward words and positions the Scripture contains. Excusing ‘fornication’, ‘adultery’, and ‘homosexuality’ became more important than being willing to obey God’s Word –even in the face of scoffing and derision from the world. As a result of this subtle drift, the cultural tide gathered momentum and now we have rushed into promiscuity, infidelity and all sorts of evil and perversion. God’s boundaries for our behavior have been discarded and flaunted and the result is misery and trouble for individuals and the society in which we live.

As we became more self-absorbed we began to dismiss the value and dignity of our fellow man. We elevated our own “choice” as the standard of right and wrong. As a consequence we justified tossing out marriage vows with the shallow excuse of “I don’t love him/her anymore.” Our selfishness has given us license to kill those we deem inconvenient. One young man I encountered years ago at a Crisis Pregnancy center said he was urging his girlfriend to abort their child because he “didn’t want her to lose her figure during swimsuit season.” He and more than 54 million of us have succumbed to lies about the children we have conceived. “It’s just a blob of tissue.” “It’s my/her body.” “I can’t support a child right now.” “I will have to give up my education/job/home.” “My parents will kill me.” Notice all the focus on “self”? Satan is a liar and deceiver. He has twisted our thinking to focus it around ourselves instead of God and His standards.

So what do all these skewed ideas about sexuality and conception have to do with marriage and our society? As we have embraced immoral sexual choices and devalued the lives of our un-born, we have lost our ability to see the need and worth of a committed, one-man, one-woman lifelong marriage. We have believed the lie that we are just an evolved form of amoeba-life rather than the special creation of God Almighty—image bearers of God Himself. We have dismissed marriage that God instituted in the Garden of Eden as a legal affair that is on par with the agreement to buy a car. We fail to regard it as a mysterious union of two people designed to bring more image bearers into being, to give mutual encouragement in the difficulties of life and to accomplish a joint life-work that would be incomplete or impossible for just one or the other to do alone.

To be sure, we live in a fallen world and there are many who find themselves married to an adulterer or an abuser. Our gracious God has given us guidelines and grace in Scripture to help in these heartbreaking troubles. But for most of us, marriage should be faithful lifelong commitment. We ought to see it through God’s lens and value the purposes for which He instituted it.

God instituted marriage for four main reasons:

For companionship

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18

For procreation

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” Genesis 1:27-28

For service to God and man

…And God said to them, “…fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1: 28

For a display of the relationship of Christ and His Church.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Ephesians 5: 31-32 (for context see the entire passage: Ephesians 5: 22-33)

Let us embrace the high calling of our marriages as one of the best ways to live out our love to God and man. Let us accept the challenges marriage brings as part of God’s sovereign way of “growing us up” into the likeness of Jesus.

QUESTION: What is your evaluation of marriage? Does it reflect what God says or your own (selfish) ideas, desires and “needs.”?

Every Choice Counts

Posted on by Karyn Jeffrey

Several months ago I tried a campaign of intermittent fasting because I had a pretty sizeable number of pounds I wanted to shed. As I was thinking and preparing for that discipline, I came up with the phrase: “Every Choice Counts.” It is very possible that I didn’t come up with it, but rather someone else said it, I heard it and it came out of my mental archives without a credit.  No matter. It has worked quite well for me these past several months. I was able to shed several pounds. But along with the summer drifting and winter waffling (almost literally), I began to make little compromises and small choices. Argh! They have begun to add up to something: the return of those unwanted pounds!

All this puts me in mind of the way that small things can really trip us up. The Scriptures say in that rather neglected book Song of Solomon,

“Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, while our vineyards are in blossom.” Song of Solomon 2:15.

The context isn’t about weight loss or anything so “un-romantic” but the principle that small things—“little foxes”—can spoil something lovely or good is quite true.


We all have choices to make that may seem small and inconsequential. But they do matter.  Each time I reach for that Little Debbie Nutty Buddy rather than drinking a glass of water or having a cheese stick instead of a carrot stick, I derail my eating plan just a little more. Last night I had “just a few” tortilla chips, silently excusing the little choice as “it’s probably only about 150 calories.” Those “little foxes” are what are sabotaging my weight loss plan. It was all going so well and then bit by tiny bit I am losing the hard-won ground.

So, today, I am going back to this mantra that has been so helpful.

A new calligraphy piece. I used the Blackletter style and added small glitter dots with “Stickles” gold.

But enough about dieting. What about my art work? What about the reading and writing that are part of my “work”? What about the little failures to speak a loving word or do a kind thing? Those moment by moment choices, little though they be, add up to the whole tenor of my life.

Another new calligraphy piece. I lettered in Foundational hand and used gouache (opaque watercolor paint) to letter and paint the little picture.

Every day that I pick up my pen or pencil and spend a few minutes practicing my calligraphy or writing for my blog, I am adding “little grains of sand” that will help me master and accomplish my goals for these areas of my life. Every time I make time to visit with my elderly mother, I am choosing the path of love that will define my life.  All those little choices and all those little things matter.

QUESTION: What little things are tearing up your “vineyard”? What choices will you make today that will define your life?

Glorious Color

Posted on by Karyn Jeffrey

Oh! I love color! Lots of color. Swathes of color. Glints of color. As I gaze into the jewelers’ case at the emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topazes, opals, and the pearls I nearly cry for the beauty of their colors. Sitting on the patio surveying the summer garden I reel, speechless at the glorious kaleidoscope of color. I experience a deep visceral reaction to color. Always have. I dream in color. I notice color. Color matters to me. So I am intrigued when I think about the spiritual component of color and light.

This morning I am looking out at a snow-white fairyland—several more inches of snow piled up overnight. The temperatures have remained below freezing for days. The result is a gorgeous ermine-robed world. The trees, fences and even, it seems, the houses, are gray and drab background to this pristine and shining display. When the sun comes out the whiteness nearly blinds us. What is happening with this addition of ‘light’? Technically, the whiteness of the snow is the outworking of the science of optics and light. When our eyes see what we call the color ‘white’ we are actually seeing every wave length of light bursting on our retinas. In contrast, when we see an object and give it a color name, say ‘red,’ what is happening is that that object is absorbing every wave length of light except those that give our retina and brain the color message we know as ‘red.’ So every color is there in that eye-watering brightness of the snowy white. How amazing!

Every season of the year has its own color palette. Spring announces its arrival with petticoats that flash pink, blue and gowns herself in every variety of green—especially that vivid chartreuse that screams “winter didn’t win! Creation is still alive!” Autumn spangles herself in outrageous robes of orange and eye-popping yellow with broaches and buttons, sashes and swags of vermilion and copper. Winter, in her hoary vesture, at the first careless glance makes us think “it’s just white.” But look closer and see that her voluminous gown and cape are subtle and exquisite swaths of lavender, periwinkle, and slate in every shadow and expanse. Summer outdoes them all with her fiesta bright floral skirts flung with shameless abandon across the carpets of rich green. Saucy magenta, lemon, scarlet, azure and turquoise all splash across her harlequin caparison.

And then there are human faces with colors so varied they defy the categories we have foolishly limited to ‘white,’ ‘black,’ ‘yellow,’ ‘brown.’ How utterly untrue and so limited! Every face has its own unique hue: ebony, amber, alabaster, saffron, coral, rose, fawn, ecru, and russet.

Pondering this incredible array of color and the amazing processes that are involved in how we perceive color, I realize that there is an astonishing aspect of truth in what Jesus says when He declares “I am the Light of the world.”

Jesus—being Lord God Almighty—is indeed true light. Yes, the context is spiritual, but the unmistakable correlation to light and color as we know it is inescapable. Jesus—God Himself—enlightens all that is “real.”  All creation’s vastness is explained and displayed because He, the infinitely vast One, is the “reveal-er.”

Close your eyes and imagine a sunny, blue-sky day. Now think what happens when the day winds down to twilight and sinks into the black of night. Those golden sunflowers along the fence, the sapphire delphinium leaning on their supports, the crimson roses nodding on their thorny branches all begin to lose their lovely hues. As the light fades every object becomes more and more gray. They all blend into an indistinguishable mass of dun and finally disappear altogether in the darkness of night. No light, no color.

The correlation in the spiritual realm is vivid. Jesus, the Light of the world, gives color to every aspect of life.  As the Creator, He is the cause of all the light we see and hence all the color we encounter. And spiritually, when we experience the amazing reality of our sin being forgiven and removed by His death in our place, our entire outlook changes. Our spiritual eyes are opened in new life as we awake from the spiritual death of sin. In comes a flood of love, joy, and hope, all as our world no longer is dark and dead, but rather lighted by Jesus and His glorious, radiant holiness. It is no accident that God used the rainbow—that awe-filled arc of every color–to promise His own that they will not be destroyed in His judgement of sin.

QUESTION: Are you “seeing” life in living color or are you trapped in spiritual darkness?

CHALLENGE: Step out of the darkness of sin into the glorious, colorful light of Jesus. Admit your sin. As God to forgive you because Jesus died in your place. Then bask in His light.

“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation….The Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.” Romans 10:9,10, 12,13