An Abiding Determination

A man who makes a vow to the LORD or makes a pledge under oath must never break it. He must do exactly what he said he would do.

Numbers 30:2

“For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Just words. A mere phrase, really. You hear them at every wedding. Are you impressed? Probably not. It’s one thing to say these words; it’s another to keep them. Let’s face it, it’s a covenant that bears out only over the course of a lifetime. And half the time it doesn’t.

We had assembled a small panel of marriage experts to interview in an auditorium of nearly two hundred college students studying marriage at our university. None of these experts had a PhD. They’d never published scholarly articles or anything else related to marriage. We don’t even know if they’d ever read a single article on matrimony. All we knew is that these couples were experts by virtue of the longevity of their relationships. Elvin and Lois, married seventy-two years. Ken and Mable, sixty-eight years. Eldon and Dotty, seventy.

“Did you know marriages could last so long?” we asked our students in opening the floor for their questions. They sat in awe of these affectionate couples, like they were viewing a rare curiosity that belongs in a museum. One student raised his hand to break the ice: “If you combine the number of years each of these couples have been married, it comes to 210.” Students chuckled, but they got deadly quiet when the next student asked, “What has kept you together all these years?” Elvin was the first one to speak up. “An abiding determination to do so,” he said. The rest of the panel nodded in agreement.

The “till death do us part” of marriage is not an ideal. It is a reality that is ensured by an unswerving commitment—a willful agreement to keep love alive. And, no matter how long a couple has been married, it may be the most effective tool good marriages use in battling bad things. Without commitment and the trust it engenders, marriage would have no hope of enduring.^a

Marriage is a commitment—a decision to do, all through life, that which will express love for one’s spouse.

—Herman H. Kieval

^a 174

From the book