Proper 22: Old Testament, Genesis 2:18-25

Genesis 2:18-25

I love the book of Genesis. In fact, the longer God gives me to walk with Him in this world, the more I marvel at His book of beginnings. We, as readers, may not get all the details of the earliest history of the world. But the ones God shares are so rich and wonderful.

Take the account of the first marriage. Take into account that at the very beginning there wasn’t anyone to get married. Then there was a stunning event (two actually) that one could describe with the deeply theological word “POOF!” A man made from the dust of the earth. And a woman to “correspond” to the man and made from a piece of him. Honestly, these are a snapshot of so many rich and wonderful, deeply God-focused events. But I want to give focus to one particular point.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). “Hold fast,” or in some translations “cling” is the rendering of the original Hebrew word. Either way, what do we have? We have the man inextricably joined to the special creation God made just for Him. And it doesn’t mean the man isn’t for the woman. But being a husband myself, married to the same wonderful woman for just shy of forty years, I like that hold fast part. I need my wife that way. I hope she loves being needed that way.

It’s a love and a relationship that depends on the “cling.” We were made for each other. I think that, and then I consider our original parents. God did a great thing, that marriage deal, that “velcro love.”