“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love...For this is your lot in life.”
Ecclesiastes 9:9
The hero of Oblomov, a Russion novel, by Ivan Goncharov, gets asked “What do you do in life?”
Is there a question we get asked more frequently? Probably not in today’s society. Yet this character responds with something refreshingly different: “What? What do I do? Why, I am in l love with Olga!”
What a refreshing change of pace for us Westerners! So often we reply to such a question with a word about our vocations or our hobbies: “I’m an executive at Bank One, and I like to golf and sail on the weekends,” or, “I work in marketing for a printing company, and I lead the women’s ministry at my church,” or even, “I homeschooled our three children.”
But what, really, is our biggest charge? If we’re married, isn’t loving our spouses at least in the top three? And yet, how often do we mention it or even think it? Have you ever listed your duty to love your spouse when someone asks you what you do? “What do I do? I focus on loving Bill!” “What do I do? I romance my wife, Melissa.”
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