本帖最後由 LongLeeLu 於 2014-8-24 11:07 編輯
That sounds - testament in our life:
《河馬教授》世界最不想讓人知道的事 文◎張文亮
現在，已經很少人提到「立約」。其實，許多的規定，以約為基礎。約的核心價值，在表明永遠之約的存在。例如結婚是一個約，不單是夫妻感情的約定，法律的約定，成立家庭的約定，而是一個見證，見證上帝講求約定。所以結婚，不是露水式的姻緣，不是有緣就在一起，無緣就分散，而是用生命去承諾的約。
許多的規定，都是來自「約」，例如學生有入學典禮，是學校與新生的約定，學校守約教好學生，學生守約學好所學。美好的部份，都需要學習，一次又一次的學，反覆的習練。骯髒的，人天然就懂；墮落的，不用學就會；淫穢的，自然產生；驕傲的，稍微得誌就有。教育的本質在此—人天然有罪，美好需要學習而得。此外，任職的就誓，商業的貿易協定，原本都在見證上帝是立約、守約的上帝。
上帝是守約的上帝，這是祂給世人很重要的啟示。因著有約，祂的創造有次序；因著立約，祂的行事有設計；因著守約，祂持續的供應；因著約，祂審判。人雖小信，祂仍可信；人會失信，祂仍守信。人若棄信，等於毀約。人若背信，必失上帝之約的祝福。
「我必與你們立永約」(以賽亞書55：3)**，這是何等嚴肅的一件事。結婚之約、學習之約、工作之約、協定之約等，時間都有限，但是永約，影響到永遠。長期以來，世界對待教會有三個方法：集權的國家，不讓教會存在；自由的國家，不讓人在乎教會；野心的國家，政治利用教會。目的都是一樣，不讓人知道上帝與人曾立約。
教會是告訴人，上帝與人立永約。聖經又稱為「新舊約全書」，告訴人上帝與人的內容。想知道約的內容，是去教會學習的目的。
「當我們愈勇敢的站出來回應每一個上帝放在內心的感動時，我們就會愈對神蹟有更多的敏感，正是在災害與危機發生之際，我們確知上帝就在那裡，以祂的膀臂圍繞著我們，讓我們繼續這一條冒險的道路。」～劉炳熹～ (The more courageous when we stand up and respond to God in every heart touched, the more we will be more sensitive to the signs, it is in the occasion of disaster and crisis, we do know that God is there to Him arm around us, let us continue this a risky path. )
***
We Pledge Allegiance ... ’
AUG. 21, 2014
Photo 
Credit Brian Rea
A friend of mine believes a king-size bed leads to a divorce. Her parents had a king-size bed, and when she was in collegeher father confessed to having an affair. He blamed the ensuing divorce on a lack of intimacy, but my friend blamed it on her parents’ too-big bed.
To avoid a similar fate, she and her husband sleep in a queen-size bed.
We humans make up these silly rules, as if rules can guarantee that our lives will go as planned.
As a child of divorce, I have tried over the years to figure out the secret to a lasting marriage. When my parents split in the early 1970s, I was 7. Without any warning of domestic strife, we moved in with another family. The other family’s house was a giant Victorian across the street from Duke University in North Carolina.
I didn’t know it then, but this was the era of “free love.” As soon as we moved into the new house, my father began sharing a bedroom with the mother of the family and my mother began sharing a bedroom with the father. My little brother and I slept on foam mattresses on the other son’s bedroom floor.
Before we met this other family, we lived in a yellow house on a quiet street next to a pond. I had my own room with a pink canopy bed. My little brother rode his Big Wheel through the hallways. My mother sewed all our clothes. My hair was brushed and pulled back from my face. I looked neat, taken care of and loved. At the time, I didn’t realize there was any other way I would ever look.
After six months of living with the other family, I was shocked when my parents announced they were getting a divorce. We were sitting on the bed my father shared with the other mother when they told me. The bed was hard and uninviting, and I hated the other mother, and it made everything so much worse to be on her bed, in her room, and in the messed-up life that I believed she had sucked us into.
The summer of the divorce, my mother, the other father, his son and I packed our belongings into an old white Plymouth and droveacross the country to live in Northern California. We left my little brother and father behind with the other mother and her infant son.
I have a photograph from that day of me in the car looking out the back window at my father and brotheras we pull away. My expression is what my mother called “Debby’s pout.” The other father has one hand on the wheel and the other out the window making a rude gesture toward my dad. My mother looks straight ahead.
In college, I started dating a boy named Josh. With him, I felt safe. When I stayed over at his apartment, he would sometimes rock me to sleep by putting his foot on the floor to sway the bed back and forth.
Our first summer together, we read the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to each other below high cliffs on a beach in Southern California. It was such an unexpected thing for me to do with a boyfriendthat I knew this guy was different. We were both children of divorce, and although marriage and a family seemed 1,000 years away, we did agree on one thing: We would never mess up our children with divorce.
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We married in our mid-20s. I don’t know how other people feel when they say their vows, but for us the phrase “Until death do us part” felt profound. I remember being surprised when I choked up saying “In sickness and in health,” barely getting the words out as tears streamed down my face.
Though it seemed redundant, we also made a separate “no divorce” pledge, like taking out an insurance policy on our marriage.
Once we had children, that pledge became more concrete. It was easy to love each other then. When our first child was born, we spent hours watching her sleep. We made it through two miscarriages and felt lucky when we eventually had boy-girl twins. Though they were seven weeks early, we worked together to get them home from the neonatal intensive-care unit and then to thrive.
As our children grew, resentment, blame and criticism seeped into our marriage, and loving each other became more of an effort. And yet, our “no divorce” pledge remained strong. No matter how bad things were, divorce wasn’t something we would let ourselves consider.
When I began to see a therapist in my late 30s, one of the first things I told him was, “We can talk about my marriage, but I am never getting divorced.”
He looked at me in that way therapists do, as if to say, “Sure,” and suddenly our rule felt a little ridiculous.
Then a good friend’s marriage began to crumble. She and I took long runs together, and the more she talked, the more I realized she needed to get divorced. I knew it would be difficult for her and her children, but in the end I believed they would turn into a different kind of happy family.
As I viewed my friend’s divorce from this new perspective, our “no divorce” rule started to seem childish. It struck me that our attitude was like a closed fist, and if our marriage was to survive, maybe we needed to open that fist to allow space for possibility. Maybe doing so would let the strength of our marriage be derived from more than just the fears of two broken children.
When we were really driving each other insane, my husband would sometimes say “I divorce thee” three times (referring to some custom he’d read about), and it would lighten our mood. But other times the tension between us was so palpable we could barely look at each other, and we would yell and scream, or wait for things to calm down and then move forward.
As we struggled in our marriage without our ironclad rule, it seemed as if everyone in our small Montana town was suddenly ending theirs. The recession hit our real-estate-driven community hard. It was as if my friend’s marriage had been a bookend holding up a giant shelf of marriages, and once hers toppled, the rest came tumbling down.
It wasn’t just divorce but divorce coupled with drugs, bankruptcy, breakdowns, affairs, foreclosures and teenagers with guns. This was my community, my neighbors, my yoga teacher, the family with six children, the people I vacationed with, dinner-party buddies, landscapers, real estate agents, caterers and the parents of my daughter’s best friend. These families appeared strong, but then everything imploded and, once again, I was surprised and needed to understand why.
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The recession hit our family hard, too, but somehow we are still married. I’m not sure why. I’d like to say it’s love, but perhaps it’s simply luck. At one point, as we faced our construction business faltering, our life savings dwindling to nothing and a slew of other problems, we looked at each other and said, “Let’s not make it worse by getting divorced.”
And so we stuck it out. Sometimes staying together is just about pragmatism.
But the recession also gave us something unexpected: time and perspective. Without a backlog of homes to build, we had space to reflect, talk and get to know each other again. I began to appreciate my husband for who he was rather than who I thought he should be.
He may not be someone who buysme flowers or delivers on birthdays, but when I became obsessed with Dave Matthews, he bought me every Dave Matthews CD ever made, and when we go to restaurants he often orders my second choice so I can eat his meal if I don’t like mine.
Approaching my 50s, I know the “no divorce” pledge Josh and I made all those years ago is just one of those rules people make up to give themselves the illusion of control. Though I believe loosening our grip on our pledge saved our marriage, I think the pledge saved it, too. Our pledge gave us a strong foundation before we were ready to go it on our own, and by the time we realized we had outgrown the pledge, it had taken root and grounded us as we found the space to deepen our relationship.
The child in me still wishes there was a secret formula to make a marriage last: perhaps a dose of bringing each other coffee in the morning along with a smidgen of holding hands at the movies and a dollop of passionate nights.
But my more-mature self realizes that after 23 years of marriage, the key for our relationship to grow and thrive is finding a soft place to land between the rules we make and the reality we live.
Debby Greene lives in Bozeman, Mont. She and her husband have a custom home building business.
A version of this article appears in print on August 24, 2014, on page ST6 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘We Pledge Allegiance ... ’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
***
Isaiah 55:3 -- Open your ears, and come to me!
Listen so that you may live!
I will make an everlasting promise to you—
the blessings I promised to David.
** Isaiah 55:1-5 (MSG) |
1-5 “Hey there! All who are thirsty,
come to the water!
Are you penniless?
Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
Buy without money—everything’s free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.
I set him up as a witness to the nations,
made him a prince and leader of the nations,
And now I’m doing it to you:
You’ll summon nations you’ve never heard of,
and nations who’ve never heard of you
will come running to you
Because of me, your God,
because The Holy of Israel has honored you.” |
發表於 2014-8-19 06:36 
