Daily EncouragementSample

This ancient law reflects the Lord’s recognition of the importance of the early days of married life. What wonderful days those are, so full of a new-found joys! Yet at the same time, they are a crucial period of mutual adjustment when decisions are made and directions are established which will affect all the years to come.

The purpose of this year off was that the husband might be free to stay at home and bring happiness to his bride. God’s loving concern for the wife’s happiness shines through his holy law. No doubt the prospect of a son and heir was bound up with this happiness. What greater joy could there be for a wife and for the husband too than to gaze upon their first-born child?

In most cases today neither husband nor wife feel free to stay at home. Is this the reason for lack of happiness in many a marriage? Then there is the related question of a negative attitude towards having children. “Christians would agree that man and wife are one flesh,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “But surely they would add that this ‘one flesh must not live to itself’ . . . It was made for God and (in Him) for its neighbours - first and foremost among them the children it ought to have produced.”