Part 1

Vows—do they mean anything today? Most of you who are married have made vows something like the following:

Vows for the husband: “Will you, in the presence of God and these witnesses, take to be your wedded wife. Will you love and cherish her, provide and care for her, in health and in sickness, in prosperity and adversity, exercise patience, kindness, and forbearance toward her, and live with her in peace as becometh a faithful Christian husband, and forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her as long as you both shall live?”

Love and Cherish Her

It has been said that marriage does not need love to keep it going; love needs marriage to keep it going. Sadly, many marriages go on without love, sometimes for the sake of children. Children are a good reason for keeping a marriage intact, but we need more.

Love has to do with our emotions and these can be as changeable as the weather. We should seek to grow in our love, rather than just seeking to feel good. We see lustful infatuation so often in our day. When we settle the fact that we are married “until death do us part,” we seek to make this an experience of love. So, if you do not love your spouse, start loving her. The husband of a sweet couple shared that three years after they were married, he was sure he had the wrong wife. But they got back to God. When I learned to know them, they were a godly couple who loved each other dearly.

Provide and Care for Her

Notice that this part of the vows only applies to the husband. We live in a time when two household incomes are the norm. This was not the case in bygone years. Today, many households still make it on the husband’s income. Many Godfearing mothers happily serve at home. Christians want to take seriously 1 Timothy 5:8: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” Many of us pay twice for the education of our children, because we have our own Christian schools. We take seriously helping with the needs, medical and otherwise, of our fellow believers. Even with those extra expenses, many families still make it on one income.

On July 22, 2004, I had a hip replacement. The recovery and healing of that experience were a reminder of the commitment my wife made. Many sleepless nights and restless days made it very clear that my companion was dedicated to caring for me. In November of that year, we experienced a worse calamity, when we were in an accident and both of us were “laid up” for several months. What a blessing it was to be able to share in the many sleepless nights. To talk together and to comfort each other was again a reminder of the commitment we made to each other forty years earlier.

I have read accounts of married people who left their partners because of sickness or accident. As I wrote this article, the Schiavo case was being played out on the national scene. Her husband wanted to keep the feeding tube removed, while the parents of his wife tried their best to have it reinserted. I learned that the husband had been with another woman. But what about his commitment to his wife? Jesus said, “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:5, 6).

Exercise Patience, Kindness, and Forbearance Toward Her

An unkind word to our spouse should be like a clap of thunder on a clear day. If the sun were shining in a cloudless sky and we heard a loud clap of thunder, we would all wonder what’s going on. Words, when spoken, cannot be taken back into our mouths. We may, and should, apologize, but the hurt will remain for a long time. The challenge is to set a watch at our lips. Ask God to help you be patient, kind, and loving at all times.

It seems strange how easy it is to overlook our own failures and make excuses for our mistakes. We seem to have a lot of forbearance when it comes to ourselves. The story is told of a wife who left the faucet on in the barn one evening. Her husband quickly told her what a terrible mess he found the next morning. Sometime later, he made the same mistake. “Why,” he said, “it just didn’t look so bad when I did it.”

May God help us to be loving and kind to our companions and hard on ourselves. “Charity [love] suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil” (1 Corinthians 13:4, 5).

-Allan Miller