BBQ and Blessings
I hope to change your idea of a
successful business trip.
After a day of meetings in
Overland Park, Kansas, our team was eating Kansas City barbeque. Several of us experienced team members were sharing our careers with our younger dinner
companions. Each of us identified our wives as a source of strength.
One had been married for 43
years. Another married only a mere 20 plus years. Each spoke of their wife as a
blessing of completeness, love, understanding, and a blessing of forgiveness in
all the foolish things we have done.
A young woman in our group said we
were making her emotional speaking well and loving of our wives. She said, “I
hope I find that in a husband.”
God said, “It’s not good for us
to be alone.”
“A man leaves his father and
mother and clings to his wife; the two of them become one flesh.” Turn it
around, “A woman leaves her father and mother and clings to her husband; the
two of them become one flesh.”
As Christians, every one of us should
know that there are two important persons in our marriage. Neither one of them
is you.
One is your spouse and the other
is God. God created us with the capacity and the need to love another. God’s
grace allows us to truly totally love another person. God brings our spouse
into our lives. It is Christ in us that allow our spouses to raise us up. Our spouse
grabs our hearts and takes us into a life of selflessness that without them, we
would never attain.
Steve arrived in Kansas City on Thursday.
He was frantic. Leaving Dallas, he had forgotten to have flowers delivered to
his wife on their anniversary that Friday. Early in his marriage his wife did
not like flowers; but, now she does. He wanted her to get flowers, to be happy,
to know she’s loved. Steve’s a big old softy.
Jesus said a marriage fails
because of the hardness of hearts. Think about it. The hardness of heart keeps
God out and keeps our spouse out. Hardness of heart does not recognize the
importance of God in our marriage. Hardness of heart does not allow us to lift
up our spouse. Hardness of heart does not recognize how our spouse raises us
up. Because of this hardness of hearts, a marriage becomes selfish.
Marriage is everything opposite
of selfishness. It is the celebration of unity and giving yourself to another. Selfishness
found in the hardness of heart that destroys all unity; the unity of marriage; the
unity of humanity. The same selfishness which destroys marriage destroys the
world. Selfishness denies human dignity and promotes injustice, racism, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and war.
Selfishness violates God’s words
“it is not good to be alone.”
Selfishness is against Christ.
Paul writes “He who consecrates and those consecrated all have one origin.” We
are all the seeds of the “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”
God did not create us to be
selfish. He breathed life into us to know unity. Unity realized as God’s
children; children humbled by grace to rid ourselves of selfishness. We become the
innocent children our Lord Jesus Christ accepts and embraces through eternal
salvation.
These men eating barbeque and telling
their blessings in Kansas City had something in common outside of business. The
something made them a success. All witnessed more than just a relationship with
their wives. Each was a man of Christ. One was a Lutheran. Two were Baptist. Two
were Catholic. All witnessed Christ simply in the love for their wives.
To Christ and to our wives, “You
complete me.”
For Gary, Bob, George and Steve,
and all of you, a blessing - May the Lord bless you, your spouse and family all the days of your lives. Amen.
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