You Are Hereby Sentenced to Marriage Prison
"It may sound like a nightmare," reports Stephen McGrath of BBC Travel, 'but records show that this form of marriage counselling in Transylvania was rather effective."
He is speaking of the "marriage prison" housed within the walls of the 15th Century church in the heart of the "frozen in time" Transilvanian village of Biertan.
Inside the church grounds, along one of its fortification walls, is a small building with a room inside barely larger than a pantry. For 300 years, couples whose marriages were on the rocks would find themselves here, locked away for up to six weeks by the local bishop in hope that they would iron out their problems and avert a divorce. ...
The room has low ceilings and thick walls, and is sparsely equipped with a [single] table and [single] chair, a storage chest and a traditional Saxon bed that looks small enough to belong to a child. As couples attempted to repair their marriages inside this tiny space, everything had to be shared, from a single pillow and blanket to the lone table setting.
The prison room is today nothing more than a museum. But it remains, nonetheless, a testament to the many success stories fought for (now doubt!) and won within its walls.
“Thanks to this blessed building, in the 300 years that Biertan had the bishop’s seat we only had one divorce,” said Ulf Ziegler, Biertan’s current priest.
You can either choose to see your troubled marriage as a prison within which you feel trapped and seek to escape, or you can choose to "sentence" yourselves to the experiment of "marriage prison" — a spiritual place of commitment to shared experience and oneness, a place where "everything [has] to be shared," as God has intended.
Within the walls of that theoretical prison, you just might find an intimacy and a oneness that sets you free to experience all that marriage can be.
"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24, ESV, cf. Matthew 19:2-9).
Half Of Nothing
Click here for a Good Morning America video of man who literally cuts everything in half to comply with a court order to give his wife half of everything.
Resent will rob itself in order to withhold from someone else. It isn’t satisfied until everyone has been cheated.
“See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up and causes you trouble, or many of you will become defiled” (Hebrews 12:15).
Divorce Day
Did you know there is a day every year that some refer to as “Divorce Day?” No, you won’t find it on your Google calendar nor will you be reminded about it by Hallmark. It’s a term used by those in the legal profession. Jimmy Nsubuga with METRO.COM explains:
It’s that time of the year again where married couples who can no longer stand each other get divorced.
Lawyers are expecting the traditional January spike in official separations to continue, with the first Monday after the New Year holiday often referred to as ‘divorce day’.
The couples apparently want to spend one last Christmas with each other to see if things will work out.
... ‘Financial pressures are also known to be key issues in arguments at this time of year with 40% of parents admitting that this was causing strains in their relationship.’
Business for the firm has been up at least 25% in January in the past few years compared with an average month.
We are statistically astute enough to anticipate its timing, but that doesn’t stop “Divorce Day” from happening every year. The pattern is there, we can see it coming, but we seem to be powerless to stop it, at least in our own power.
That’s why God sent His Son into the world, so that we might have access to a love more powerful than human limitations, more powerful than statistical trends, more powerful than financial pressures, more powerful than death itself!
Don’t just stand there and helplessly watch your life succumb to the downward momentum of a fallen world. If God’s love can conquer the grave, it can conquer “Divorce Day.”
Without the healing power of God’s love, all we can do is submit to the statistics. With the help of God’s love, we change those statistics?
"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25).
"As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one" (Ephesians 5:31, NLT).