The Journey 85
Monday, March 26
Read: 1 Samuel 1
          A woman  appeared before the judge in divorce court. "How old are you?" the judge asked. "Thirty-five," said the woman. The judge noticed her graying hair and wrinkles and said "May I see your birth certificate?" The lady handed him her birth certificate. "Madam," he said, clearly annoyed, "according to this certificate you are not 35 but 50." "Your honor," replied the lady, "I'm not counting the last 15 years I spent with my husband. You call that a life?" . There are lots o of people like this lady who would want to forget the years of marital life. But meet Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher of North Carolina. They have been married for 85 years and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest marriage of a living couple. Zelmyra is 101 years old and Herbert is 104.  When Twitter asked them about how they could keep their marriage intact, they said that  “With each day that passed, our relationship became more solid and secure. We never thought of Divorce, and it  was  never an option. We grew up together  and were best friends before we married. Thus we also became friends for life and hence our marriage has lasted a lifetime. We had crisis, and we agreed that it’s okay to disagree, and fight for what really matters. We learned through our relationship  to bend  and not break! . We are both Christians & believe in God and hence through each crisis and experience we became close to each other because for us marriage is a commitment to the Lord”. Life experience and crisis that brings spouses closer to each other and to the Lord.
                       This week we will start meditating on a new theme “ Transformation in my family life”. The family that we are going to consider as the model family is found the book of 1 Samuel chapter 1. Here we find a wonderful couple whose name was Elkanah and Hannah. The uniqueness of this  home was that Elkanah had two wives. One was Penninah and the other was Hannah. What was distinct in the life of Hannah and Elkanah was that, Hannah did not have any child while Penninah had children. This resulted into a lot of mental anguish in the life of Hannah, and her anguish was also compounded by the fact that Penninah also used to mentally torture her. But in the midst of all these crisis  we find that her husband Elkanah loved her, and showed his affection to her in  a special way.  Here is a couple who is facing crisis in their family life. Realizing that there is crisis in his family and that his wife is going through mental and emotional anguish, the husband takes special care to show love and concern to his wife. A couple who uses crisis situation to come close to each other and also to the Lord. What a contrast today in our world. When there is crisis in  the family, we tend to move away from our spouses and our relationship with the Lord also become lukewarm. Elkanah and Hannah teaches us that crisis is normal in human life and that all of us may go through different types of crisis. But when crisis happens do we support each other, do we stand with each other and strengthen each other, or do we leave each other alone to fight their own battles and experiences  of life?
Think...Has crisis strengthened your family relationship or is ripping you apart?