Josh and Eden

Josh and Eden, you’re 2/3 of a month into marriage.  The literal honeymoon is literally over.  But that’s fine!  We hope you now and throughout your life will experience those Beach Boy lyrics: 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up

In the morning when the day is new?

After having spent the day together

Hold each other close the whole night through?

From a couple envisaged scenarios in the Torah, it would seem that the first year of marriage should be occupied with…well, marriage.  Learning good communication while figuring out what gets in the way of that.  Discovering what has changed – or what should change – in navigating friendships now as a married couple.  Spending time together.  We pray this is a year of setting a good foundation for decades together.

One of God’s directions for laying such a foundation is Proverbs 11:24:

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer;
    another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.

A wise life includes a habit of generosity.  Josh and Eden, when you practice generosity, you tap into the strange math of God containing this formula: giving leads to abundance; stinginess to poverty.  So, give freely.  

There is a way of withholding what you should give.  Even to each other.  You’ll see: sooner than you’d think possible it’ll be easy to phone in your relationship with each other: to only half listen while the other is talking; to allow impatience and irritation and even cynicism to creep into your exchanges; to expect the other person to accept your bad habits instead of YOU taking responsibility to change; to not enter the tedious work of scheduling/ prioritizing and instead just letting life happen.  

Josh and Eden, say a continual ‘no’ to this softly encroaching selfishness and give freely to each other.  Especially the great gifts of attention, politeness, patience, personal responsibility.  ESPECIALLY the great gift of continuing to care deeply about your marriage and your home/family.  This seems very simple but is somehow hard to sustain.

Josh the Trumpeter: especially give to Eden the gift of a bright, clear note of vision for your family’s goodness and happiness.  (Come see me later for the explanation of why a good definition of goodness is “fullness of being” and how that applies.)  Don’t let time or setbacks or any onset of shame make you retreat into the selfishness of loving ease, being a bore or a grouch, turning inward.   

Eden, give and keep giving all your energies into your tiny family and – if God blesses – your growing family.  Be committed to the uber-valuable offering of optimism, to making the household hum and the family laugh and the table set.  In so giving – I promise the proverb works! – you’ll tap into an endless supply of God’s abundance that will allow you to keep cheerfully giving until you draw your last breath! Joyous Eden between Edens!    

Of course, when we think of giving freely our mind turns first toward giving material gifts.  Thank God, you’ll have plenty of occasions for such.  Both of you come from larger families that are just getting bigger.  And judging from your wedding parties you’re surrounded by good friends.  I hope at least one of you has been given the special talent that knows how to give just the right gift for that specific person… without breaking the bank.  Don’t begrudge the many occasions for giving that pop up through the year – have fun with it!

Work hard, save and plan…so you can give liberally.  Set your guests a good table when you invite them over… go ahead and spring for the grass fed beef.  Light the candles; plan good conversations.  Give your overnight visitors the especially soft towels you’ve reserved for honored guests.  Find new, appropriate reasons for giving… e.g., a gift to your Sunday School teacher at the end of the semester.  Take time to write a nice letter.  Take the trouble to travel to the wedding or funeral to which you could easily beg off as ‘not convenient.’  

Give freely and watch your life multiply.

Give to Christ’s church – planned, principled, regularly, at least a little sacrificially.  Find a missionary or church planter to support as a family.  

Give to your kids.  They don’t have to have the nicest things, but they should sense by your spending that their parents are thinking through their lives, are doing their darndest to set them up for success, consider them to be valuable now and forever.  Your kids should sense that if you are withholding something it is not out of stinginess or selfishness but because you’re pursuing some greater gift to them, albeit perhaps less tangible.  (Or because you’re a little poor at the moment!) 

There is a way of living that keeps to itself, that thinks of savings only in terms of personal advancement/ setting oneself up.  Reject this selfishness that will only impoverish you in several ways.  

Rather: Reach out with phone calls to grandmas.  Be the one in the neighborhood that takes the trouble to learn people’s names.  Help your friends move.  Walk up to people at worship gatherings and start conversations.  Take initiative to call your adult siblings.  When your kids get older, take the trouble to go out with them and talk. Invest. Attend. Start. Fix. Invest more.  GIVE TO YOUR UNCLE.

Josh and Eden, we’re not naïve in charging you thus.  Of course, you’ll need boundaries and to make other concessions to the possibility of burnout.   But set boundaries and head off burnout in the context of a life that is welcoming, hospitable, generous.  

If your marriage is meant to be a demonstration to the heavenly powers that everything heading toward being united to Christ (and it is!) LET CHRIST SHOW UP IN YOUR MARRIAGE.  The One who came toward us, who multiplied loaves and fishes, who fixed what was busted, who started conversations, who was eminently invested, who eventually GAVE HIMSELF.  Jesus: the One who was rich but became poor so that we through his poverty might become rich.  LET YOUR PARTNERSHIP THROUGH ALL KINDS OF GENEROSITY BE REDOLENT OF THAT ONE! ! !  

Josh and Eden, this charge 2/3-of-a-month-in should be considered inadequate for anything except to encourage you to continue this conversation this year: HOW CAN WE SET UP OUR LIVES TO DO THE MOST GOOD IN THE RIGHT ORDER TO THE MOST PEOPLE POSSIBLE?  

Let me repeat: HOW CAN WE SET UP OUR LIVES TO DO THE MOST GOOD IN THE RIGHT ORDER TO THE MOST PEOPLE POSSIBLE? 

When you take up answering that question, you will discover the incredible multiplying of God.  So go ahead, give freely and watch what God does.