Mondays with My Old Pastor by José Luis Navajo

Author:José Luis Navajo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

After a few seconds of silence, he said to me, “Robert Anderson gave a very interesting key for a stable marriage. He said this: ‘In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage.’”

He smiled at me, and when I had smiled back, he went on. “The only pillar capable of supporting the weight of a marriage is love. Only love is the pillar that is able to hold up that building during cruel winters and against the most adverse conditions. And perhaps you will ask yourself, ‘What does this romantic theme have to do with the solemn issues of the ministry?’”

“Well,” I ventured, “marriage is related to ministry . . .”

“Marriage is the ministry.” He strongly emphasized the verb is. “One of the most powerful credentials of the ministry is your marriage. A healthy love life reinforces and strengthens the ministerial area. Taking care of your family is taking care of your church. And the key to that care is love: Lavish love on your loved ones. Love with abundance; give away your love with no limits.”

“God is love,” I said, remembering. “Does that have anything to do with it?”

“‘Of course,” he congratulated me. “The relationship that God has with us is based on what His own essence is: love. That is why He continues to seek us out in spite of our insolence, indifference, and contempt. He loves us and forgives us. That is the key for a marriage, to keep on loving ‘in spite of.’ To keep on forgiving.”

“In spite of,” I repeated. “That seems like an interesting point to me.”

“Something falls short with the concept of love,” he said with conviction as he opened his Bible and thumbed through the pages with admirable agility. “I have discovered that there are two types of love. Listen to what 1 Samuel 1:5 says: ‘But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb.’”

My old pastor explained, “The story is about a man named Elkanah who had a wife named Hannah. The Bible says that this woman could not have children—that is, she was barren.”

He leaned over toward me to explain more thoroughly: “To capture the real meaning of this verse, you need to know that in that time and culture, the rabbis said there were ten types of people who were excluded from a relationship with God. They were people who had been labeled . . . considered cursed. That relationship began with that man who did not have a wife, or having one, she could not give him sons. There is no doubt that Hannah’s barrenness represented a serious problem, not just for her but for her husband as well. The state of a man whose wife was barren turned him into something similar to being anathema . . . one who was cursed and excluded from communion with God.”

“Really!” I replied, recognizing that was a real problem.

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