Happily Ever After: Devotions from Time of Graceഉദാഹരണം

When You’re Engaged: Till Death Us Do Part

It seems like a romantic thing to craft your own wedding vows and then say them while looking into your fiancee's eyes. I attended a wedding once where the young man got off to a great start with his customized vows, but then under the severe pressure, sweating profusely, it became obvious to all of us that he was freelancing halfway through. And I pledge, uh, you my faithfulness, for, uh . . . as long as we shall be together.

Well, he didn’t promise much of anything, did he? Just to stay together as long as they were together? Alas, the movie stars who set the standards for moral behavior in America today seem to be willing to promise no more than that. Any marriage that makes any claim to respect God’s institution is a vow “until death us do part.”

Easy divorce was a feature of Israelite life in the fifth century B.C. just as it is in ours. God’s voice thundered, “Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. . . . Do not break faith with the wife of your youth. ‘I hate divorce,’ says the LORD God” (Malachi 2:15,16).

God hates divorce. His children do too. When you make your vows, say I'm right and mean what you say.