There's Something Wrong With You

Suppose a man marries a woman but she does not please him. Having discovered something wrong with her, he writes her a letter of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house. Deuteronomy 24:1

This verse today appears to be an easy out for a man. Moses gave us this and it is even done under Islam to the present time. Must be a good idea to have lasted so long, eh? When I read just this verse to start the chapter, as a writer I see the setting and characters: man, wife, house, and this is what is going on at this moment in the story. There is neither praise nor condemnation, just a statement of the circumstance. God is not saying that a man is allowed to do this and it is alright with Him. Later, Jesus seemed rather cold on the idea of divorce except in the case of unfaithfulness, and of course cold to my Lord Jesus means sin to me.

What is interesting is the abrupt termination of a relationship. Arranged marriage or chosen freely, this seems just too easy, too quick. It may not have happened that way, the scriptures are at times very understated. The man may have had to go before the elders and explain what exactly did not please him about the woman. Yes, it does seem unfair, but this devotional writing isn't about judging the ways and times of the folks back in the day. What it is about this morning is relationships. Every relationship, it seems to me, is going to come to that point where one discovers something wrong with the other.

Most of those wrongs are going to be simple differences in how we do things. Detail-oriented persons tend to irritated by the big picture types. A perfectionist would have difficulty relating to a 'good enough-er'. The neatness fan is rubbed wrong by the slob. There are a legion of examples. Yet, neither method may be wrong in God's sight. The relationship that gets past this point of irritation can grow into an excellent team with one partner adding the other side of a difference to the other and making the sum of the parts that much greater. (There's an old saying I'm mucking up there.)

So, when I get to that point in a relationship where I say, "There's something wrong with you..." the other person will no doubt have long since discovered several things wrong with me; I might even receive a detailed listing with cross references, but wait, that isn't the point I was trying to make! It is at that point that prayer and the guidance of our Lord's dear Holy Spirit will lead me to accept the difference, and then add it to our team to the glory of God. With God's wonderful help, I might even learn to not state it in quite that way!

Have a better relationship with one another on this day, even if there is something wrong with me.

Bucky