A recent survey revealed that a quarter of 18 – 24-year olds think that marriage should be a temporary contract much like the ones we have for our mobile phones. It would seem that the idea of a lifelong commitment to one person is being increasingly seen as unrealistic. Our consumer culture which encourages us to keeping switching service providers and upgrade to better models on a regular basis has finally affected the way we view relationships.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. It is a symptom of a society that has lost sight of the concept of a loving, faithful God that we lose confidence in our own ability to form and sustain lifelong relationships.
The problem is, however, that while our expectation of lifelong fidelity may have fallen, it’s the one thing we truly long for. Our hearts are never more fulfilled than when we know that we are truly loved by another, and never more broken than when that love is betrayed.
The answer lies not in abandoning the idea of lifelong commitment as an idealistic irrelevance, but rather in discovering a God who loves us in this way and gives us the power to reflect that love in our own relationships.
