by
Paul & Sandy Freed

We received a coupon in the mail recently, one of those oil change specials. I thought, "That's not a bad deal." It included the filter and complete oil change. We took the car down to the shop. Now, we hadn't tried this garage before, but we left the car there for an hour. When we came back, we paid them and headed on down the road. After about an hour and a half we saw a little bit of smoke coming out of the front of the car. I thought, "I wonder what that is; they must have spilled some oil or something." I wasn't paying much attention, deciding to keep driving and went down the road another 15 or 20 minutes. Suddenly we heard, "Boom!" and this awful black smoke began pouring out of the car as it shook violently. We pulled it off to the side of the road and realized that we were not going anywhere. We had the car towed back to the shop where we had the oil change done. After a few hours we found out they had drained the oil out, given us a brand new oil filter, charged us and sent us down the road, but had left out a little detail. They had forgotten to put oil back in the vehicle. Evidently, cars work better with oil, because it took a $3,000 engine job and about three months before we were finally driving our car again. We got all this for only the coupon special!

I don't know what you did with your marriage certificate, whether you put it in a drawer or tacked it up on the wall. Nevertheless, we keep going down the road of life. We start having kids and jobs and houses and all the things that we do, and forget to put some fresh "oil" back into our marriage. The best marriage needs it (at least every 3,000 "miles"). We all need some good input for our homes. Someone said to me recently, "I don't need marriage input, we have a good marriage." That is like saying "I had a great meal last month!" I don't know about you, but I like to eat three meals a day. We will invest in many things but so often we will just let our marriages hang out there. We let them stagnate and do the best they can.

Just over a generation ago in this nation, there were nine divorces out of every 1,000 marriages. This has been chronicled by Whitehead in a New York Times best seller, The Divorce Culture. Do you know what that had come to as of this writing? It is no longer nine out of 1,000. It is now 504 divorces for every 1,000 marriages. We are looking right at the implosion of the home in a cataclysmic social event that is unprecedented in this nation's history. It has happened in one generation! In fact, nearly every person in our culture has been impacted by the "divorce culture." We have seen marriage collapsing all around us.

I was recently out having dinner with my wife after one of our conferences and I was still wearing a name tag that said "Marriage Makers." The waiter came up, looked at my name tag and said, "Marriage Makers, what in the world is that?" I told him, "We do marriage conferences all around the country. We want to strengthen homes and marriages." Do you know what he said? He looked right at us and defiantly said, "Everyone I know is either divorced or in the process of getting divorced." Everyone he knows! Then he asked a question. When he said it, it gave me chills; it still affects me just thinking that he actually spoke it. He said, "Isn't marriage over?" How staggering! We have now come to the place in our culture and our society where people are actually asking the question, isn't the institution of marriage passé, isn't it finished, isn't it over? We rightly shake our heads "no." But, why is the answer "no"? The answer is "no" because God created marriage; not because of what we do with it, whether we succeed or fail. The point is, God is the one who started the marital union; it was His idea! In fact, the first human relationship was a marriage. Who performed the first wedding? God did. When God brought the first two people together, He started with a marriage. He could have started anywhere. God could have started with a whole nation, but He didn't. He started with the home and with a marriage.

The Song of Solomon reveals to us God's heart for marriage. Solomon, the author of the Song of Solomon, reigned between 971 BC and 931 BC. He wrote the book early in his reign, around 960 – 958 BC. This is very important, because at this point in history he was married to one wife, only one. He was married to the Shulammite from a little village named Shulam in southern Lebanon. Solomon wrote 1,000 songs and 3,000 proverbs. But, right in the middle of our Bible, we find a whole book devoted to love, lovemaking and the marital relationship.

This fantastic little book has insights and keys that have become nearly forgotten in our culture. However, as always, the wisdom of God can still energize and lead our lives to new heights.