Jesus says that divorce isn’t what he wants.

His followers say, “then why get married?”

And we say, “What?”

It is better to be safe, they are saying, than to risk the impossible. It is better to not ever be in the situation of having things go wrong, they are implying, than to be in the situation where things can go amazingly, delightfully, life-transformingly, passionately right. It is better to avoid the possibility of a  more thrilling and terrifying and nerve-wracking and soul-wrenching life than you could ever imagine.

It is better to be uptight than married.

While some of you are thinking about that, I need to quickly say that Jesus is not at all implying that to be fulfilled you have to be married. In fact, he is saying the exact opposite. He is strongly affirming that God calls us each differently. It is better to be single than married if you are built for being single. It is better to be married than single if you are built for being married.

We often take this approach to life, to relationship.  If we might get punished for messing up, we think, we are better off not even trying.

Jesus almost always offers another alternative: do what he invites you to do and do it with his help.

Jesus knows that marriage is hard, or can be. Jesus knows what it feels like to be betrayed in relationships. But he also knows that we are created for relationship, we are created to love, we are built to enjoy every element of marriage, if that is where we arrive.

So live. Live well. Live with delight. Live with risk.  It seems safer to avoid failure, but it is far safer to pursue life in relationship with the giver of life.