Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect your decrees!

Commitment is challenging. I am not sure I would have been able to consider remarriage if it wasn’t that Jayne and I knew each other as friends and if she hadn’t been so close to Katey over those years of my own implosion. She knew me inside out as a person; she’d observed the behaviours arising from my many fractures. If she knew that and could still commit to me, I was certain of her love for me. I also had observed her closely as she dealt with her own grief through divorce, and how courageously she had put her life back together and proved a wonderful single mother. Making that commitment was a matter of words expressed in a moment. Living it was to trust that whatever the future held, our love and faithfulness was sufficient.

I recall just how simple it was to commit my life to Jesus. I was young and idealistic. Jesus offered a perfect role model dispensing justice, serving the marginalised, offering a way to live that was easy to understand. However, as the years passed, I realised just how simple the prayer of commitment was compared to the harsh reality of living such a commitment. My naive initial understanding was that all would be well in my world, for I had surrendered to Jesus. Little did I realise that a lifelong commitment meant finding and serving God in the shadows and the darkest of nights, not merely in the dappled sunlit lanes of summer.

Jayne and I walk and talk often. We have discovered where our emotional scabs have failed to heal fully and easily get broken. By communication we have established, through trial and error, strategies that enable us to reduce the likelihood of hurting each other, enabling us to pause ahead of reacting. And so it is with God. That initial commitment will never prove sufficient without constantly developing an intimate conversation with God.

QUESTION: Take time to review the nature of your commitment to Christ.

PRAYER: Gracious Father, I thank you that though my commitment wavers, through your Son you have promised to never leave or forsake me. Thank you for your steadfast love.