There was a reason God formed marriage in the Garden of Eden and not the desert.
Did God use symbolism in the Bible to describe how the world was formed? Personally, I think so. That symbolism that he used to represent marriage is important. To me, it actually would be stronger than the literal interpretation. God gave us marriage as a gift in the Garden of Eden.
God chose to create marriage, the bond between one man and one woman, in the Garden of Eden. He could have done this anywhere, but he chose the one place that represented abundance and pleasure. The symbol of Eden gives us a different sense of what marriage should be than if marriage was formed in the desert where things are dry and barren.
God wants us to know marriage, our marriage, is supposed to be full of abundance. Everything good that man needed was in Eden. All the food, all the life source they needed was there, and it was there in abundance. They praised and thanked God for everything.
Our marriage should mirror that. When we take our wedding vows, and we pledge to each other to love honor and obey each other for life, we become one. That one is not meant to be a dry and barren place, but a place full of life, excitement, joy, pleasure and God.
Communications
We should have an abundance of joy in our communications. Communication is the grout that keeps us together. Just like a tile floor that had no grout, without quality communications, we would soon start splitting and cracking and falling away from each other. It is important to learn how to truly and joyfully communicate with each other.
I used to think that my wife and I talking about what we needed to do, who needed to be where and when and working out the kid’s schedule was communications. While that may be a form of communications, our relationships need a deeper level of communications.
For the first 40-years of my life, I am not sure I ever discussed a ‘feeling.’ That was not something real guys did. I wanted my wife to give me the facts, only the facts of what is going on. I did not care about the why or how she felt about it. Going to our Retrouvaille weekend, I learned about the importance of communicating and digging deeper to find out not only what was going on with Jessica, but why and how she felt about it.
We were given the tools on how to start communicating and bringing us closer together through communications. Compare this to how I used to behave around my wife. If she told me something, I would snap and say that is all I need for information. I still may slip back into these old habits from time to time, but I try not to live in that barren desert where our communications were superficial and not deeper. Communicating and understanding between us now brings us joy, most of the time.
Spiritual Life
Our spiritual life is also meant to be a bountiful harvest between us. There were times in our lives where either we did not go to church, or we went on an occasional Sunday, but that was it. Prayer? What was that?
Think back to how God described the first husband and wife. They knew who God was, and they were thankful for all that he provided. Man was very thankful to God that he gave man women. We were lonely, and God cared enough about us to give us exactly what we needed.
We are meant to have that same relationship with God. Today, not only do my wife, and I go to church together, we also will occasionally go to adoration, and we try to make time at home to pray. Even recently there was a Novena that we are both doing. Our relationship is a lot stronger because we now have God in the center of it.
Family
The family is another place where we are designed to have abundance. I understand that not everyone can have children. But you do not need to have seven children in your house like us to have a bountiful family relationship. We should always be open to children. When God designed us, he created us to procreate and to multiply. Our family can be a place we can always fall back on when we need help. We have a lot of kids because that is what God gave us. My wife also has three sisters, and they have kids too. My sister has three kids of her own.
The family is someone you can always turn to and trust, but only if you work to build that relationship. The family doesn’t need to a bountiful harvest. If you have seven kids, but everyone is always doing their own thing, and you never eat together, you don’t go church together; you don’t ever travel together, then your family is more likely to be a dry desert.
Physical intimacy
God gave us physical intimacy to procreate. Intimacy is also a way we can grow a lot closer as a couple, which is why he made it enjoyable. We were meant to be shared with each other inside the bonds of marriage. That gift of intimacy should not be used as a tool or a weapon of punishment. The physical intimacy helps bring us closer together as long as we do it with love and respect. As long as do not treat each other like an object, but use it in a way to bring us closer together, this is another aspect of our life that God gave us in the Garden of Eden that was meant to be part of the abundance of joy instead of a barren desert.
Abundance and pleasure are good when they are used how God intended. God created this holy matrimony in the one place that provided everything we needed in abundance. Now let’s bring that abundance into our marriage and live as God intended us to live.
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