happily married

This morning, another of those snippets of scripture that always captures my imagination.

The verse is Deuteronomy 24:5, which says, “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.”

My first reaction to this verse is to think how society would change if we did this now. Then my imagination meanders through images of marital bliss followed by boredom and then by laziness and idleness and then the struggle to re-enter the workplace. I know, I have an uncanny knack for dumping cold water on beautiful ideas. At least I’m not as bad as a friend who jokes that we’re only required to keep our wives happy for the first year. Or maybe after a year of being underfoot the best way to make them happy is to get out of the house

I think there’s truth hidden in my musings, cynical though they may be, because we struggle to get marriage right. One strong hint in this verse for husbands is that our wives want our time and attention. God thinks one way to get a married started right is for anything that would divert a man from his wife to be put aside. Maybe he had to command that because he knows that, given the chance, we husbands tend to spend our time afield. He focuses us back on our homes.

And the purpose is the happiness of our wives. For me that’s both a daunting challenge - you could fill books with jokes whose punchlines are about how impossible it is to know what women want - and a wonderful promise that, done right, marriage is a source of great joy. It’s like God is telling me I don’t have to try to make myself happy with wealth or accomplishments or diversions. In my marriage he’s already given me happiness.

There’s a line in a poem I once read that calls marriage “both highest heaven and deepest hell.” But I get to pick which it will be for me. And if I want the first one, God tells me how.