The Life Box

The Character called Forest Gump quoting his mother said that "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." In some ways, she was right. Life is a box of assorted experiences and not all of them are sweet or scrumptious.

In so many ways love is just the same. It is like a box of chocolates with an assortment of bitter and sweet ones. In life we often end up in marital relationships that are not all they seem to be. They may taste sweet initially but as with all flavours in the life box, when you experience their core, you taste the bitterness of their real nature. This is why the traditional marital vows include the lines "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health..." Alas, the primary cause of most heartaches in relationships is captured in those vows, many don't survive the gradual descent into the for worse, for poorer, or sickness. Why? Well I believe it is because what we call "love" is often a euphemism for "convenience". When it's inconvenient, we walk. In 2nd Timothy 3:1-4, Apostle Paul, speaking to his protégé Timothy, said "there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." Do these traits sound familiar? If so, now imagine being in a relationship with someone who exhibits any of these and after you've done that imagine yourself being the person who is also exhibiting them. You get the picture. We can't do anything about the forces of Nature that strike at us or the unexpected circumstances like sickness which afflict us, but where the cause of our trauma is manmade the taste is even bitter. Apostle Paul's admonition to Timothy was simple - have nothing to do with them. This is God's admonition to Christians. In other words, if you see any of these traits displayed, don't exchange vows, just walk. Don't try to convert them in the hope of redeeming them - redemption is a divine act of God not man. Where the person is all sugar and spice and seems too good to be true, just pray for your eyes to be open to see who they really are. If they remain sweet then it's a good chance that they are but if they don't, God's admonition to you is to just walk before you end up at the altar and a world of pain.