Happily Married

Today as I opened my browser, the homepage on this foreign computer was set to msn.com. The opening story: "Does your marriage measure up?"
Interestingly enough, I am, even in my extremely single lifestyle, intrigued by marriage. I look forward to a marriage to a smoking hot wife and having children and adopting children of my own, as I have mentioned in earlier posts. However, I think marriage has turned into debauchery in our culture. Over fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, and the "happily" married couples are reading garbage like the page on MSN that make men and women feel like they're relationship isn't measuring up and make them question if their own marriage is truly happy. This infuriates me to my core. I don't know the first thing about being in a marriage, and not much more about maintaining a relationship for that matter, but I understand commitment, and not many people believe in it anymore.
Even more intriguing to me is the language of the Bible, and how time and time again marriage is used to identify our relationship with Christ or Israel and Judah's relationship with Yahweh. In Jeremiah 2, God says He remembers our devotion as a bride. Where has it gone? Have we not been even more of a whore to Christ in our relationship than in our own earthly excursions? We repeatedly offer up our bodies to Christ as a half-hearted sacrifice, unpleasing and unholy to God; just the opposite of what we are called to do.
For whatever reason I have always been drawn to this language of us as a bride to Christ; subjecting ourselves to the leadership of our husband. Paul remained single his entire life and did great work for Christ. He even stated in 1 Corinthians 7 that he would hope we all could remain single as well. However, there was one marriage Paul was most certainly a part of. He was the bride in a marriage he would desire us to belong to as well. Let us submit ourselves to our husband today, in Christ, and ignore thoughts of insufficiency and inadequacy of Christs love. He has, and always will be enough for us, and yes, my marriage most certainly measures up!