Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....March 23, 2020
This is the third teaching in our series in marriage. I pray the first two have given you some insight into how to make yours more Godly....This week we look at...
How the Bible defines intimacy in marriage.
Our Biblical guide this week is...1 Cor. 7:2-11
1. What is biblical intimacy?
This is an area that most people rarely talk about especially in the church, but God and His word have lots to say about it. When most people hear that word intimacy nowadays, they think of sex.
But to God, physical sexual intimacy is only a part of overall intimacy. Intimacy is having a very close connection with another. This involves every aspect of the person; physical, emotional, intellectual; and spiritual. It is having detailed knowledge of the other person in all these areas.
So, in our marriages, we need to really evaluate how well we really know our spouse. Lets see what the God has to say about intimacy in our marriages.
1 Corinthians chapter 7:2-11 (NLT)
2But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
8Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. 10To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
2. How can you be more intimate with your spouse?
A. Thru Cooperation
3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
One way to be more intimate in our marriage is by sharing, cooperating. When we got married, we were joined to our spouse. we left our parents and become one with our spouse. That means we are to share everything. its not 50 50 split, but 100% for both. In the verse, Paul is talking about how we belong to our spouses. He isn’t saying that one spouse owns the other one. He is saying that what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine. He is talking specifically about sex and our bodies belong to our spouse, but it goes deeper then that. Everything we have belongs to our spouse. We should now be one being, one body, one mind, one spirit.
B. Thru Commitment - faithful
10To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Another way to increase intimacy with our spouse is thru our commitment to each other. A marriage is an exclusive relationship between 1 man and 1 woman. We see God’s design for marriage in Genesis, Adam and Eve. That is God’s design. The bible warns in many places about being unfaithful in our marriage and the devil so wants to destroy marriages. He will tempt you everyday. We are bombarded every day with tv, music, billboards, amgazine covers, websites, emails, and on and on. Sexual temptation is everywhere.
In Matthew 5 it says..."You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
In the book of Revelation, we see this warning...
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." -Rev 21:8
So, we need to stay faithful and moral with our spouse in intimacy. We really need to be aware and prayerful as couples in this area. So many marriages, even between Christians fall because the marriagge commitment fades and thats when Mr Devil comes in.
This brings us to our last point on how to be more intimate in our marriage.
C. Thru Communication
5Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
The best way to increase intimacy in our marriages in to communicate with each other. We need to talk about everything. In the verse, Paul is talking about communicating about our sex lives, but its more then that. We need to talk about everything and I mean everything.
If our spouse is going to know every detail about us, then we need to share and talk with them.
They should know absolutely everything about us. Our needs, our wants, our wishes, our goals and dreams. They should know our spiritual walk, they should be side by side with us.
Never keep secrets from your spouse. This can only lead to the devil using them against our marriages. The devil wants to destroy our marriages and if we are not talking to each other, especially about things that we are struggling with, then the devil will just come in and use that.
A marriage is a team and for that team to know where its headed and if we are on the right path, then we MUST talk to our spouses. Never be afraid or ashamed and always be honest. God gave them to us as a partner, as a helper. Use them in that role. No man can make it alone. Talk to your spouse about your sex life, about your finances, about your children.. everything. nothing should ever be off limits with your spouse. This takes time and work. But you need to do it. No marriage can grow without communication and the husband and wife cannot grow closer together with communication. This includes praying together. A couple that prays together, stays together.
God has created marriage so man would not be alone, but also so that we can understand our relationship with him better. when we have a more initmate relationship with our spouses, we can then have a more intimate relationship with God and vice versa. When we have a more intimate relationship with God, our marriages become more intimate.
For those of you who are not married we can apply the same points to having a more intimate relationship with God.
So how do we have a more intimate relationship with God. I belive that we can thru the same 3 things we looked at in our marriages to have a more intimate relationship with our spouse and apply it to our relationship with God.
A. Thru Cooperation - Involvement
First, we need to be cooperating with God and not trying to go and do our own thing. We need to try and be in line with what God wants for our lives. We should be tring to decrease so God can increase. We need to get God in all of our decisions and plans. Whether we are married or single, God wants to be the God of your entire life, not just some.
Following Jesus is a choice. We need to let oursleves go and let Jesus and the Holy Spirit take over. Easier said then done. We fight God everyday. We think we know what we want, we want to satisfy our earthly desires and thats not cooperating. God knows us already, but do we know Him. Are we praying daily, are we in His word daily, are we seeking his face daily. When we involve Jesus in our lives, we will have a more intimate relationship with Him.
B. Thru Commitment - Faithfulness
Next, we need commitment in our relationship with God. If we want an intimate relationship with God, we need to show Him we are committed to Him. When we stay faithful to God, we tend to be praying and in his word and really seeking Him for what is best for our lives. But, then we drift away.
Lets look at the old testament and the isarealites. whenever they drifted away from God, they fell out of their initmate relationship with Him and bad things happened. When they came back to God, they were victorious, they had all their needs met, they were safe and they knew God.
They were faithful and did what God wanted them to do. God wants us to stay faithful and commited to him. Our God is a jealous God. It says in Deuteronomy 4: 23-24 "Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
God is always faithful and asks us to stay faithful to Him. In good times and bad, we need to stay committed to His plan for our lives. He knows what is best for us and most of the time we do not understand why things happen, but we must stay faithful to our Lord and Savior. He stayed faithful to us even tho we are sinners and stray everyday. Commitment to God shows our love for Him and how we want to have an intimate relationship with. We want to draw closer to Him so he draws closer to us.
C. Thru Communication
And finally what I think is the most important way to help grow our intimacy with God, communication. When we talk to God, we are talking to our heavenly Father. He knows us better then we know ourselves. When we open up that door of communication thru prayer, God is listening. God knows us so well, he knows what we are going to ask in advance, but he still desires us to talk with Him. He wants to hear from his children. And God speaks back, maybe not always audibly, but thru the Bible, thru others, thru circumstances. We need to be able to recognize His voice.
If you are not praying, you need to start. There is no correct form. Pray in your own words. just start talking to Him everyday. Make time for prayer. Just start with a few minutes. God wants you to talk to Him about everything going on in your life. Keep a prayer journal and see how he answers your prayers. If you want a more intimate relationship with God, this is it. Just like in marriage, this is the key. if you want God to speak to you, speak to Him. Pray, be in your bible and see what God wants to say to you.
I love this verse about praying to God and what he can do in Zechariah 13:9 "I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure, just as gold and silver are refined and purified by fire. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ’These are my people,’ and they will say, ’The LORD is our God.’ "
We saw three things we need to have a more intimate relationship in our marriage and in our walk with God. With Cooperation, Commitment and Communication we will be able to grow closer to our spouses and to God and further away from the Devil and the things of this world.
NEXT WEEK...We finish our teachings on marriage...
This is the third teaching in our series in marriage. I pray the first two have given you some insight into how to make yours more Godly....This week we look at...
How the Bible defines intimacy in marriage.
Our Biblical guide this week is...1 Cor. 7:2-11
1. What is biblical intimacy?
This is an area that most people rarely talk about especially in the church, but God and His word have lots to say about it. When most people hear that word intimacy nowadays, they think of sex.
But to God, physical sexual intimacy is only a part of overall intimacy. Intimacy is having a very close connection with another. This involves every aspect of the person; physical, emotional, intellectual; and spiritual. It is having detailed knowledge of the other person in all these areas.
So, in our marriages, we need to really evaluate how well we really know our spouse. Lets see what the God has to say about intimacy in our marriages.
1 Corinthians chapter 7:2-11 (NLT)
2But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
8Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. 10To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
2. How can you be more intimate with your spouse?
A. Thru Cooperation
3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
One way to be more intimate in our marriage is by sharing, cooperating. When we got married, we were joined to our spouse. we left our parents and become one with our spouse. That means we are to share everything. its not 50 50 split, but 100% for both. In the verse, Paul is talking about how we belong to our spouses. He isn’t saying that one spouse owns the other one. He is saying that what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine. He is talking specifically about sex and our bodies belong to our spouse, but it goes deeper then that. Everything we have belongs to our spouse. We should now be one being, one body, one mind, one spirit.
B. Thru Commitment - faithful
10To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Another way to increase intimacy with our spouse is thru our commitment to each other. A marriage is an exclusive relationship between 1 man and 1 woman. We see God’s design for marriage in Genesis, Adam and Eve. That is God’s design. The bible warns in many places about being unfaithful in our marriage and the devil so wants to destroy marriages. He will tempt you everyday. We are bombarded every day with tv, music, billboards, amgazine covers, websites, emails, and on and on. Sexual temptation is everywhere.
In Matthew 5 it says..."You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
In the book of Revelation, we see this warning...
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." -Rev 21:8
So, we need to stay faithful and moral with our spouse in intimacy. We really need to be aware and prayerful as couples in this area. So many marriages, even between Christians fall because the marriagge commitment fades and thats when Mr Devil comes in.
This brings us to our last point on how to be more intimate in our marriage.
C. Thru Communication
5Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
The best way to increase intimacy in our marriages in to communicate with each other. We need to talk about everything. In the verse, Paul is talking about communicating about our sex lives, but its more then that. We need to talk about everything and I mean everything.
If our spouse is going to know every detail about us, then we need to share and talk with them.
They should know absolutely everything about us. Our needs, our wants, our wishes, our goals and dreams. They should know our spiritual walk, they should be side by side with us.
Never keep secrets from your spouse. This can only lead to the devil using them against our marriages. The devil wants to destroy our marriages and if we are not talking to each other, especially about things that we are struggling with, then the devil will just come in and use that.
A marriage is a team and for that team to know where its headed and if we are on the right path, then we MUST talk to our spouses. Never be afraid or ashamed and always be honest. God gave them to us as a partner, as a helper. Use them in that role. No man can make it alone. Talk to your spouse about your sex life, about your finances, about your children.. everything. nothing should ever be off limits with your spouse. This takes time and work. But you need to do it. No marriage can grow without communication and the husband and wife cannot grow closer together with communication. This includes praying together. A couple that prays together, stays together.
God has created marriage so man would not be alone, but also so that we can understand our relationship with him better. when we have a more initmate relationship with our spouses, we can then have a more intimate relationship with God and vice versa. When we have a more intimate relationship with God, our marriages become more intimate.
For those of you who are not married we can apply the same points to having a more intimate relationship with God.
So how do we have a more intimate relationship with God. I belive that we can thru the same 3 things we looked at in our marriages to have a more intimate relationship with our spouse and apply it to our relationship with God.
A. Thru Cooperation - Involvement
First, we need to be cooperating with God and not trying to go and do our own thing. We need to try and be in line with what God wants for our lives. We should be tring to decrease so God can increase. We need to get God in all of our decisions and plans. Whether we are married or single, God wants to be the God of your entire life, not just some.
Following Jesus is a choice. We need to let oursleves go and let Jesus and the Holy Spirit take over. Easier said then done. We fight God everyday. We think we know what we want, we want to satisfy our earthly desires and thats not cooperating. God knows us already, but do we know Him. Are we praying daily, are we in His word daily, are we seeking his face daily. When we involve Jesus in our lives, we will have a more intimate relationship with Him.
B. Thru Commitment - Faithfulness
Next, we need commitment in our relationship with God. If we want an intimate relationship with God, we need to show Him we are committed to Him. When we stay faithful to God, we tend to be praying and in his word and really seeking Him for what is best for our lives. But, then we drift away.
Lets look at the old testament and the isarealites. whenever they drifted away from God, they fell out of their initmate relationship with Him and bad things happened. When they came back to God, they were victorious, they had all their needs met, they were safe and they knew God.
They were faithful and did what God wanted them to do. God wants us to stay faithful and commited to him. Our God is a jealous God. It says in Deuteronomy 4: 23-24 "Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
God is always faithful and asks us to stay faithful to Him. In good times and bad, we need to stay committed to His plan for our lives. He knows what is best for us and most of the time we do not understand why things happen, but we must stay faithful to our Lord and Savior. He stayed faithful to us even tho we are sinners and stray everyday. Commitment to God shows our love for Him and how we want to have an intimate relationship with. We want to draw closer to Him so he draws closer to us.
C. Thru Communication
And finally what I think is the most important way to help grow our intimacy with God, communication. When we talk to God, we are talking to our heavenly Father. He knows us better then we know ourselves. When we open up that door of communication thru prayer, God is listening. God knows us so well, he knows what we are going to ask in advance, but he still desires us to talk with Him. He wants to hear from his children. And God speaks back, maybe not always audibly, but thru the Bible, thru others, thru circumstances. We need to be able to recognize His voice.
If you are not praying, you need to start. There is no correct form. Pray in your own words. just start talking to Him everyday. Make time for prayer. Just start with a few minutes. God wants you to talk to Him about everything going on in your life. Keep a prayer journal and see how he answers your prayers. If you want a more intimate relationship with God, this is it. Just like in marriage, this is the key. if you want God to speak to you, speak to Him. Pray, be in your bible and see what God wants to say to you.
I love this verse about praying to God and what he can do in Zechariah 13:9 "I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure, just as gold and silver are refined and purified by fire. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ’These are my people,’ and they will say, ’The LORD is our God.’ "
We saw three things we need to have a more intimate relationship in our marriage and in our walk with God. With Cooperation, Commitment and Communication we will be able to grow closer to our spouses and to God and further away from the Devil and the things of this world.
NEXT WEEK...We finish our teachings on marriage...
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
I know this looks like a long story...and it may be but it is worth reading...just for the ending...
Eternal Springs
By FAITH T. FITZGERALD, MD
This is a tale of presumption, which I tell so the young can hear what older doctors know: that the human spirit will always find a way to astonish. It is, for the most part, a true story.
He was a retired union leader, tough and blunt and charming. She was bright, small, agile. Both were golfers, and when he retired he built his wife her dream home in a golfing community near Sacramento. She was 80 and he was 84 when my story starts.
They'd been married over 60 years and were one person: they moved together with practiced grace, sharing dozens of small physical gestures of endearment. He called her "the Boss." She called him "He," as if there were no other men. I learned early in our 15 years together to see them both at once, no matter who had the appointment, for they answered for each other better than they did for themselves.
"How are you doing?" I'd ask her. "She's getting clumsy," he'd say. "Any problems with you?" I'd ask him. "He's going deaf," she'd reply.
If I called their home, they'd both be on the speakerphone, each telling me their concerns about the other. He'd had a childhood osteomyelitis that left him with a limp; he also had asthma and had had a coronary bypass at age 76. She'd had some arthritis. But they were mostly robust, golfing every day.
Then her game got worse—and worse. Her left hand grew weak, her speech soft and slurred. She began to fall. Her animated face stilled, became masklike— except for her frightened eyes. Within a year of her first symptoms, she was in a wheelchair. Her body stiffened and was racked by cramps, which he would try to massage away through endless painful nights. Swallowing became deranged, and she was repeatedly hospitalized for pneumonias.
Her neurologist was not sure but guessed she had an odd form of Parkinson disease. Multiple therapies gave no pause to her inexorable decline, and we finally resorted to botulinum toxin injections when she ripped her hip from its socket in one great spasmodic contraction of the muscles of her upper leg.
Each time she was admitted, her husband came in with her. He sat and slept in a big chair by her bed, never leaving her side. He fed her, bathed her, turned her, talked to her. The busy nurses loved him for his love of her and nonintrusive helpfulness to them. When I told him how much the staff admired him, he was nonplussed: "Isn't this what husbands are supposed to do?" he asked.
He modified their house for her: ramps, grab bars, stair lift, bed sling. And when even this was not enough, he reluctantly persuaded her to leave the home they had built together ("Just until you're better," he told her—and she, seeing his despair, pretended to believe him). They moved into a single story house near their granddaughter, who checked on them each day. Home nurses visited, did what they could. Yet he still himself would lift her, bathe her, help her to the toilet. Often now they fell together, each taking the other down. His arthritis worsened, and his heart began to fail.
Over his prideful protest that he could take care of his own wife, the family hired a full-time live-in helper, a strong Tongan woman. She was deeply sympathetic, as sometimes is the gift of those themselves oppressed. She was the sole parent of a 6-year-old girl, and finding a job that allowed them to stay together had been hard. However, the old couple welcomed the active child, who brought joy to them both with her radiant vivacity and affection. Still, the old man continued to lift and turn his wife at night, though the live-in helper slept near them. "The helper needed her sleep," he said. He refused hospice when the nurse told him that he'd have to promise not to rush his wife to the hospital in an emergency, but call the hospice nurse instead. Neither he nor his wife wanted to be in the ICU or to have CPR, but he'd too often seen her pulled back from the brink by intravenous antibiotics and pulmonary toilet in hospital to surrender these options yet.
The call finally came as I knew it must: She looked bad, he said. Should we get the paramedics? "If you want to," I told him, "or you can wait for me; I'll come now."
"It's hard to know what's right," he said.
"Yes, it is. Call your family. I'll be right there."
"It's really bad this time," he said, and hung up. I drove like a fury, but when I arrived, the ambulance, siren screaming, was pulling away. He and his granddaughter were in the driveway.
"She had trouble breathing," he said, "so I called 911. I thought maybe they could just give her some oxygen here, but they said they couldn't do that, that they had to take her to the nearest hospital." He and his granddaughter got into her car to follow the ambulance.
I had no privileges at the hospital to which she'd been taken, but the triage nurse knew me from a lecture I had given and let me into the emergency room to see my patient. She'd had massive aspiration, was febrile, pale, and obtunded. The pulmonologist was an older man who—once he'd heard the story and spoken to the family—readily agreed to palliative care and antibiotics only.
She died 3 days later, her husband holding her hand. Although there were many family with him in that hospital room, at that moment he was truly alone: it was in his face as he stroked her hair. I knew then that he would die soon, and that it would not be his heart but his aloneness that would kill him. Half of him—her—was already dead. For 60 years the other half had been, above all other things, her husband, her protector. It was his role in life, and it lay dead with her. What was left?
A week after the funeral I phoned him. "How are you?" I asked, and was unexpectedly startled to hear his voice reply—not hers, as had always been the case before.
"Okay," he said.
"Just okay?" I asked.
"Well . . . my arthritis is better." No surprise. He no longer lifted her.
"Good."
"And the swelling in my ankles is gone."
"Fine."
"My breathing's better, too." His heart was being less stressed by exertion now.
"Doctor?" he said.
"Yes?"
"Do you think I could try that Viagra that everybody's talking about?" I was stunned.
"Viagra?"
"Yeah. Will my heart take it?" I thought perhaps he was confusing Viagra with some new anti-inflammatory.
"Viagra—you want it for . . . ?"
"What else? Performance! You know . . . it's been a long time, what with the Boss so sick and all. Now a lady's asked me out to dinner, and I don't want to embarrass myself." "Do I know this lady?"
"Don't think you ever met her. She came up to me at the Boss's funeral. The Boss and I used to play golf with her and her husband a long time ago. She told me she'd decided way back then that if her David died—he keeled over last year—and the Boss died, that she'd come after me." He laughed. "Isn't that something?"
"That's something!" I said. Then I just had to ask, "How old is this lady?"
"About my age," he said.
I prescribed the Viagra. A week later, I called again. He answered.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
An unfamiliar female voice came loudly over the speakerphone: "Great!" she said. "He's doing great!"
I know this looks like a long story...and it may be but it is worth reading...just for the ending...
Eternal Springs
By FAITH T. FITZGERALD, MD
This is a tale of presumption, which I tell so the young can hear what older doctors know: that the human spirit will always find a way to astonish. It is, for the most part, a true story.
He was a retired union leader, tough and blunt and charming. She was bright, small, agile. Both were golfers, and when he retired he built his wife her dream home in a golfing community near Sacramento. She was 80 and he was 84 when my story starts.
They'd been married over 60 years and were one person: they moved together with practiced grace, sharing dozens of small physical gestures of endearment. He called her "the Boss." She called him "He," as if there were no other men. I learned early in our 15 years together to see them both at once, no matter who had the appointment, for they answered for each other better than they did for themselves.
"How are you doing?" I'd ask her. "She's getting clumsy," he'd say. "Any problems with you?" I'd ask him. "He's going deaf," she'd reply.
If I called their home, they'd both be on the speakerphone, each telling me their concerns about the other. He'd had a childhood osteomyelitis that left him with a limp; he also had asthma and had had a coronary bypass at age 76. She'd had some arthritis. But they were mostly robust, golfing every day.
Then her game got worse—and worse. Her left hand grew weak, her speech soft and slurred. She began to fall. Her animated face stilled, became masklike— except for her frightened eyes. Within a year of her first symptoms, she was in a wheelchair. Her body stiffened and was racked by cramps, which he would try to massage away through endless painful nights. Swallowing became deranged, and she was repeatedly hospitalized for pneumonias.
Her neurologist was not sure but guessed she had an odd form of Parkinson disease. Multiple therapies gave no pause to her inexorable decline, and we finally resorted to botulinum toxin injections when she ripped her hip from its socket in one great spasmodic contraction of the muscles of her upper leg.
Each time she was admitted, her husband came in with her. He sat and slept in a big chair by her bed, never leaving her side. He fed her, bathed her, turned her, talked to her. The busy nurses loved him for his love of her and nonintrusive helpfulness to them. When I told him how much the staff admired him, he was nonplussed: "Isn't this what husbands are supposed to do?" he asked.
He modified their house for her: ramps, grab bars, stair lift, bed sling. And when even this was not enough, he reluctantly persuaded her to leave the home they had built together ("Just until you're better," he told her—and she, seeing his despair, pretended to believe him). They moved into a single story house near their granddaughter, who checked on them each day. Home nurses visited, did what they could. Yet he still himself would lift her, bathe her, help her to the toilet. Often now they fell together, each taking the other down. His arthritis worsened, and his heart began to fail.
Over his prideful protest that he could take care of his own wife, the family hired a full-time live-in helper, a strong Tongan woman. She was deeply sympathetic, as sometimes is the gift of those themselves oppressed. She was the sole parent of a 6-year-old girl, and finding a job that allowed them to stay together had been hard. However, the old couple welcomed the active child, who brought joy to them both with her radiant vivacity and affection. Still, the old man continued to lift and turn his wife at night, though the live-in helper slept near them. "The helper needed her sleep," he said. He refused hospice when the nurse told him that he'd have to promise not to rush his wife to the hospital in an emergency, but call the hospice nurse instead. Neither he nor his wife wanted to be in the ICU or to have CPR, but he'd too often seen her pulled back from the brink by intravenous antibiotics and pulmonary toilet in hospital to surrender these options yet.
The call finally came as I knew it must: She looked bad, he said. Should we get the paramedics? "If you want to," I told him, "or you can wait for me; I'll come now."
"It's hard to know what's right," he said.
"Yes, it is. Call your family. I'll be right there."
"It's really bad this time," he said, and hung up. I drove like a fury, but when I arrived, the ambulance, siren screaming, was pulling away. He and his granddaughter were in the driveway.
"She had trouble breathing," he said, "so I called 911. I thought maybe they could just give her some oxygen here, but they said they couldn't do that, that they had to take her to the nearest hospital." He and his granddaughter got into her car to follow the ambulance.
I had no privileges at the hospital to which she'd been taken, but the triage nurse knew me from a lecture I had given and let me into the emergency room to see my patient. She'd had massive aspiration, was febrile, pale, and obtunded. The pulmonologist was an older man who—once he'd heard the story and spoken to the family—readily agreed to palliative care and antibiotics only.
She died 3 days later, her husband holding her hand. Although there were many family with him in that hospital room, at that moment he was truly alone: it was in his face as he stroked her hair. I knew then that he would die soon, and that it would not be his heart but his aloneness that would kill him. Half of him—her—was already dead. For 60 years the other half had been, above all other things, her husband, her protector. It was his role in life, and it lay dead with her. What was left?
A week after the funeral I phoned him. "How are you?" I asked, and was unexpectedly startled to hear his voice reply—not hers, as had always been the case before.
"Okay," he said.
"Just okay?" I asked.
"Well . . . my arthritis is better." No surprise. He no longer lifted her.
"Good."
"And the swelling in my ankles is gone."
"Fine."
"My breathing's better, too." His heart was being less stressed by exertion now.
"Doctor?" he said.
"Yes?"
"Do you think I could try that Viagra that everybody's talking about?" I was stunned.
"Viagra?"
"Yeah. Will my heart take it?" I thought perhaps he was confusing Viagra with some new anti-inflammatory.
"Viagra—you want it for . . . ?"
"What else? Performance! You know . . . it's been a long time, what with the Boss so sick and all. Now a lady's asked me out to dinner, and I don't want to embarrass myself." "Do I know this lady?"
"Don't think you ever met her. She came up to me at the Boss's funeral. The Boss and I used to play golf with her and her husband a long time ago. She told me she'd decided way back then that if her David died—he keeled over last year—and the Boss died, that she'd come after me." He laughed. "Isn't that something?"
"That's something!" I said. Then I just had to ask, "How old is this lady?"
"About my age," he said.
I prescribed the Viagra. A week later, I called again. He answered.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
An unfamiliar female voice came loudly over the speakerphone: "Great!" she said. "He's doing great!"
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
The Gospel of John, and 1 John...
The Gospel of John is very different in style from the three Synoptic Gospels. Instead of the familiar parables, Jesus gives sometimes lengthy discourses. For understanding Jesus’s teachings, this Gospel is an important complement to the other three.
The Gospel of John gives us insight into Jesus’s understanding of faith. He performs miracles so that people will believe, but he never intends these miraculous works to be ends in themselves. In fact, he expresses frustration that people will only have faith if they are impressed by some incredible sign. To Jesus, this is not what faith is really all about.
For Jesus, “bread” is more than food for the body, “living water” is more than water flowing from a well, and being “born again” (or “from above”) is more than simply passing through the womb. These are all symbols of faith, of living consciously in the Covenant, of having eternal life.
And what is the way to eternal life? Is it simply a matter of belief?
Here we must be very careful. In English we have different words for “faith” and “belief.” In New Testament Greek there is no such distinction. In English the word “belief” is specific and limited; we tend to think of belief as the mind’s assent to a particular proposition. The Greek word pisteuo, usually translated as “believe,” means much more. It is the entire experience of belief, trust, confidence and faith all taken together. It is a transforming experience, a profound inner change affecting not only the mind but the spirit as well. In most cases “have faith in” would be a better translation.
To “believe” in Jesus in this original sense means not merely to consent to certain ideas about Jesus but to have confidence in him and especially in what he came to teach, to experience its truth, to live it as a reality, to be transformed by it. If we understood “believe” in this fuller New Testament sense, then the question of whether someone can “believe” in Jesus and still act immorally could never arise. Anyone who professes belief in Jesus but who still lives an immoral life gives evidence of not really having been transformed by the teaching, and therefore of not really having faith.
This becomes much clearer when we consider the essence of this teaching, which this Gospel gives us more explicitly than any other. Often in this Gospel Jesus associates eternal life with “belief,” or more properly, with faith. But in one key passage he says that eternal life is God’s commandment. God’s commandment takes many forms as it applies itself to different circumstances, but Jesus brings it all down to this: God’s commandment means “that you love one another, as I have loved you.”
Jesus goes on to state that God will never abaondon those who keep the commandment, but will be present with them in the form of an “advocate,” “counselor,” or “comforter” - these are all various translations of the Greek word parakletos. Literally the word means “called to the side of,” the one who is by your side, who never leaves you. This is the deepest meaning of the Covenant: those who devote themselves to seeking God’s love - that is, to being loving in the sense that God is loving - are assured of God’s continuing presence no matter what life may require them to endure.
And why should this be? The First Letter of John tells us that “God is love.” God’s very nature is love. Not just any love - as Jesus said before, it’s easy to love when someone loves you back - but love unlimited by self-interest. When we love in this manner, then God’s essence is present within us. What we have become begins to reflect what God is. And as it does so, God’s presence with us is assured.
In tracing the main line of spiritual history from Abraham to Jesus we have rediscovered the Covenant - God’s promise to humanity - and what it means. All that remains is to test it in our individual lives.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou
The Gospel of John, and 1 John...
The Gospel of John is very different in style from the three Synoptic Gospels. Instead of the familiar parables, Jesus gives sometimes lengthy discourses. For understanding Jesus’s teachings, this Gospel is an important complement to the other three.
The Gospel of John gives us insight into Jesus’s understanding of faith. He performs miracles so that people will believe, but he never intends these miraculous works to be ends in themselves. In fact, he expresses frustration that people will only have faith if they are impressed by some incredible sign. To Jesus, this is not what faith is really all about.
For Jesus, “bread” is more than food for the body, “living water” is more than water flowing from a well, and being “born again” (or “from above”) is more than simply passing through the womb. These are all symbols of faith, of living consciously in the Covenant, of having eternal life.
And what is the way to eternal life? Is it simply a matter of belief?
Here we must be very careful. In English we have different words for “faith” and “belief.” In New Testament Greek there is no such distinction. In English the word “belief” is specific and limited; we tend to think of belief as the mind’s assent to a particular proposition. The Greek word pisteuo, usually translated as “believe,” means much more. It is the entire experience of belief, trust, confidence and faith all taken together. It is a transforming experience, a profound inner change affecting not only the mind but the spirit as well. In most cases “have faith in” would be a better translation.
To “believe” in Jesus in this original sense means not merely to consent to certain ideas about Jesus but to have confidence in him and especially in what he came to teach, to experience its truth, to live it as a reality, to be transformed by it. If we understood “believe” in this fuller New Testament sense, then the question of whether someone can “believe” in Jesus and still act immorally could never arise. Anyone who professes belief in Jesus but who still lives an immoral life gives evidence of not really having been transformed by the teaching, and therefore of not really having faith.
This becomes much clearer when we consider the essence of this teaching, which this Gospel gives us more explicitly than any other. Often in this Gospel Jesus associates eternal life with “belief,” or more properly, with faith. But in one key passage he says that eternal life is God’s commandment. God’s commandment takes many forms as it applies itself to different circumstances, but Jesus brings it all down to this: God’s commandment means “that you love one another, as I have loved you.”
Jesus goes on to state that God will never abaondon those who keep the commandment, but will be present with them in the form of an “advocate,” “counselor,” or “comforter” - these are all various translations of the Greek word parakletos. Literally the word means “called to the side of,” the one who is by your side, who never leaves you. This is the deepest meaning of the Covenant: those who devote themselves to seeking God’s love - that is, to being loving in the sense that God is loving - are assured of God’s continuing presence no matter what life may require them to endure.
And why should this be? The First Letter of John tells us that “God is love.” God’s very nature is love. Not just any love - as Jesus said before, it’s easy to love when someone loves you back - but love unlimited by self-interest. When we love in this manner, then God’s essence is present within us. What we have become begins to reflect what God is. And as it does so, God’s presence with us is assured.
In tracing the main line of spiritual history from Abraham to Jesus we have rediscovered the Covenant - God’s promise to humanity - and what it means. All that remains is to test it in our individual lives.
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou