What God Has Joined Together

GCD Newsletter – Monday, May 1, 2023

This weekend I left with my family for a short vacation. We drove down to Virginia, where I officiated my sister’s wedding. Note the word choice: officiate. When I told people what I was doing in Virginia—especially at the courthouse—I was very careful to tell people I wasn’t marrying my sister, but officiating her wedding.

Anyway, over the weekend a few friends and family asked how many weddings I’ve officiated. I haven’t added it up recently, but I think the number is over forty. But the question made me think of a silly movie from back in the day. It was about the US Coast Guard. It’s not the best movie, so I’ll leave off mentioning the title. But one of the characters in the movie, the up-and-coming recruit, becomes fascinated with the number of people that Coast Guard members have rescued. An older, more grizzled Coast Guard veteran tells the young guy that, over his career, he’s only kept track of one number, the number of people he didn’t save. That’s certainly a more somber way to look at one’s vocation.

My number stands at three. That’s the number of divorced couples who, before God and witnesses, entered into a marriage covenant for better and for worse. That’s six people who sat in my living room, sat on my couch, talking to my wife and I for hours and hours, did all the planning and prep for a wedding and a marriage, and yet now they are divorced. So much heartache. So much pain.

The circumstances for each divorce were a little different, but I’ve often wondered if there was a chance they could have been rescued. In each situation, would deep repentance and costly forgiveness have changed the outcome? Hard to say.

This week GCD published an article about marriage and divorce—or, an almost divorce. Sheila Dougal tells the story of nearly losing her marriage and how God taught her how to forgive her husband. “Seven months pregnant with our second son,” she writes, “I sat at the desk in our living room, devastated by the letter I had just read. My husband didn’t want to be married anymore.”

In this season of profound grief and loss, Sheila goes on to explain how God taught her about his love. Those lessons helped her do what she felt would have otherwise been impossible: to forgive. You’ll have to read the article, but, as I said, it was an almost divorce. That was many years ago, and today Sheila and her husband remain married. Forgiveness changed their lives.

I don’t know how exactly to relate all that heaviness with another article we published last week, the one by our staff writer, Brianna Lambert, but I don’t want to leave it without mention. Lambert’s article “Standing on the Shoulder of Nobodies” puts into words what I’ve felt in a hundred different ways. As a husband and father and pastor and writer, I’ve benefited from so many “no name” people who God has used to make me who I am. I’m thankful to God for them. He knows their names, even as he knows mine. And that brings me gratitude and contentment in a world that mostly stirs anxious clamoring for attention.

Last Week at GCDiscipleship.com

A Normal Life Includes a Great Deal of Suffering
Alan Noble

In this excerpt from the recently released On Getting Out of Bed, author Alan Noble reminds readers that other people carry burdens you have never imagined, even though they are the same people who smile and tell you that they are doing “good.”

Day by Day by Day: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#10)
Tim Shorey

“I bring this up today because while it remains our quest to live life one God-enabled day at a time—“trusting in God’s wise bestowment with no cause for worry or for fear” and believing that “every day the Lord himself is near us, with a special mercy for each hour” (as the hymn puts it), it feels a lot harder to do now, some 45 years after our 1978 wedding day. Even though hardships started early for us, we were young and naive enough not to feel how difficult they were or enduring they would be.”

Standing on the Shoulder of Nobodies
Brianna Lambert

“Our world moves and grows because of the many interconnected actions of the small, not merely the big. Isaac Newton once said that all his work existed because he stood on the shoulders of giants. But I look at the way God has made the world, and I wonder if, instead, we’re really all just standing on the backs of a bunch of nobodies.”

When I Was Losing My Marriage, Jesus Taught Me to Forgive
Sheila Dougal

“Seven months pregnant with our second son, I sat at the desk in our living room, devastated by the letter I had just read. My husband didn’t want to be married anymore. I remember standing on the patio of the home my husband had purchased with his portion of our divided assets, months after we separated. I was bouncing our eight-month-old on my hip and keeping my eye on our two-year-old while he showed me all the things he was finding at daddy’s new house. Hot tears spilled. My throat tightened. I loved this man. I wanted our family whole. But instead it was broken, and I felt my heart could literally be bleeding out of my chest.”

Thanks for reading,

Benjamin Vrbicek
Managing Editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship