The Marriage Challenge

The Marriage Challenge
Psalm 45

When you’re young and you get married, you have to get your parents’ approval, but when you’re old and you get married, you have to get your children’s approval. So I was nervous about telling my sons that I was getting married again eighteen months after their mother died and was therefore deeply moved at their joy and enthusiasm. I was also nervous about meeting my prospective stepdaughter, but that was fine too. And Kathleen was nervous about meeting her two stepsons at our wedding thanksgiving service in London, but I knew it would be fine. It had been different when I married my first wife, Ann, against her parents’ wishes. They disapproved of me because I was such an ungentlemanly young man and also because I was a pastor and because I was taking away their daughter; for years she had to battle to be independent of them. When you get married, you have to be prepared to leave your father and mother, and maybe your son and daughter...