This week my parents are visiting our family from Arizona. And it just so happens that today is their 50th wedding anniversary. Holly and I planned a very special day to commemorate their 50 years of covenant faithfulness in marriage to each other. In today’s culture, that is quite an accomplishment, and they are a great example to those of us who have yet to attain this goal. It seems that in today’s world, commitment is held highly as long as it is convenient and doesn’t get in my way, which is where the real test of commitment begins. My Dad and Mom have demonstrated that “for better or worse” they will stick with each other. As Jesus taught in Matthew 19:5-6, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” This type of “sticking” doesn’t happen easily – it takes real work, and sacrifice, and dying to self, but it can happen.

But beware, for we have an enemy who wants to ruin good things God has planned. While we were on a beautiful walk through a forested nature trail, someone broke into my old car and stole my mom’s purse and several other things. So very disheartening, discouraging, and a variety of other negative words. For the next four hours, Holly and I helped to secure the situation, but the day took a definite downward turn. Yet through it all, we trust that God will somehow work good (Rom.8:28). Perhaps we will see it and perhaps we will not. But we trust Him all the same. So yes, we have a powerful enemy, and sin is in the world, but “greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.”  In times like this we long for the day when sin will be removed, when our enemy will be ultimately crushed, and when we will be liberated to worship our God face to face for the rest of eternity.

Pressing on, Eric