Relationships
We are doing fine, but I do not want to just coast until something breaks. What can we actually build on now?
“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”
This is a song of ascents, sung by families walking up to Jerusalem for the festivals, and it is about households far more than architecture. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain. The psalm does not tell anyone to stop building. It says the effort is not the foundation, which is a strange comfort to anyone who has been quietly carrying a relationship on willpower alone.
“And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”
Paul has just listed the working clothes of a shared life, compassion, kindness, humility, patience and forgiveness, and then says to put on love over all of them, because it binds everything together in perfect unity. The picture is of a belt or an outer garment holding the rest in place. Good relationships are rarely one grand act. They are these ordinary things, worn daily.
A path forward
Put one recurring thing in the calendar that belongs only to the two of you, weekly and protected, and treat cancelling it as a real cost rather than a small one.
Ask each other one question a month you do not know the answer to: what are you looking forward to, what has been hard lately, what do you need more of from me.
Pray together, briefly and regularly, even if it feels awkward for the first month. Couples who pray together tend to find it much harder to let distance grow unnoticed.
Closing verse
“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
- Matthew 7:24-25
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