CP 187 The love of Johnny Pango

CP 187 The love of Johnny Pango…

My friends, this week I want to put before you a couple more snippets about marriage. My thoughts are driven by what an apparent confusion between romantic/erotic love and Jesus the Christ sort of love. The former is what draws us together… the second is what keeps us together. Please know that I am aware that often there is great distress when one partner chooses not to uphold the vows. There is not much the other can do except pray, forgive, hope, and pray and forgive again. However, where we can we do everything in our power to encourage couples to understand the vows they make before God and family, and then to be faithful to those vows. So here are a couple of more snippets to chew on.

1) Love and Marriage

“One of the things that most of us learn in marriage is that love – real, deep, abiding love – is the result of marriage rather than its cause. Strange but true. A couple standing before God and the church at their wedding, may think that love is the reason for their wedding. They are here, in the church, having a wedding, because they are in love.

But one of the wonders of marriage is that, in making and keeping the promise to love one another – for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part – your love deepens, you become more in love than you were when you began keeping the promises of marriage. You’ve heard married couples note this when they say, “We didn’t know a thing about real love when we got married. We were young and silly. But over the years, we’ve learned what real love is.” Through the thick and the thin of marriage, in the struggle to be faithful, love has been the gift of their fidelity. Thus the church, at a wedding, does not ask, “John, do you love Susan?” but rather, “John, will you love Susan,” speaking of love in the future tense. 

One thing that most of us discover in marriage is that the more you work at keeping the promises, the more faithfully you hold to what you promised to do, the less you have to consciously keep those promises. Fidelity just becomes part of you. You become a faithful person through your faithfulness. And thus Jesus speaks of love.”     William Willimon, Pulpit Resource 1985

                                                    

The second item is my paraphrase of a story from Selwyn Hughes’ book, ‘Marriage as God Intended’. (Kingsway publications, 1983)

2) The love of Johnny Pango

A young Polynesian man named Johnny Pango met a girl from a neighbouring island, and promptly fell in love with her. When he first met the young lady he was blind to the unpleasant reality of her shattered self-esteem. She believed herself to be downright unattractive if not ugly. She carried herself accordingly. During her childhood she had been constantly denigrated by her father. Johnny was distressed by her self-contempt but in his heart he saw the person she could be and so continued his courtship of her. Then came the day he sat down to bargain with her father for her hand in marriage.

It was the custom in that place that the bride-price was negotiated between the girl’s father and the future husband. It was usually established in the number of cows one might exchange for one’s future wife. If a girl was of 'ordinary' looks a father might be willing to accept just two cows as the bride-price. A future wife regarded as more physically attractive might be counted as worth three cows. An exceptionally beautiful maiden might mean four cows for the father. When Johnny Pango arranged to meet the father of his chosen one it was widely expected that, being shrewd, he might manage to part with only one cow, or two at most.

In this matter, Johnny was shrewder than he had ever been. He offered eight cows, double what had ever been offered for a wife! Eight cows! Of course his future father-in-law did not hesitate. The offer was accepted on the spot. The girl’s father thought Johnny a bit of an idiot. But not his future wife. She blossomed under this very public declaration of her great worth. Everything about her began to change. The girl of no esteem was transformed. Johnny’s willingness to pay the highest price had declared to her, and to the world, the place she held in his heart.

How can I conclude after a story like that? Sort of obvious is it not? God so loved the world he gave his only Son… His only Son... to the Cross... His only Son... crucified... His only Son. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church… Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ…

Be blessed as you wallow in his divine estimate of you, in his CrossPurposes.

Fred