The Value of Relationships

The Value of Relationships

Some dear friends of ours recently took a photo of my wife and I. Actually, it was a really good one and we shared it on Facebook. One of the comments we got back surprised us – well it surprised me anyway. “Your relationship is something lots of folks envy.”

Whoa there – rewind that a minute. “Your relationship is something lots of folks envy.”

Made me start thinking – often a dangerous activity for me !  We met just a little over three years ago. Our position was absolutely impossible. I was living just outside London in England and travelling a lot while my wife was working in a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. I was “retired” – I use that term loosely – while she was fully committed to the Harris Methodist Hospital in Texas. According to Google maps, there were 4861 miles between us. We thought we were just FB friends and we thought no more about it. Until God intervened that is.

The short story is that, without meeting, we fell deeply in love and I proposed to here via a telephone call within 3 weeks !!! We married in November 2010 in Texas and had a church blessing here in the UK 10 days later. We have been unbelievably happy ever since. We have been ‘adopted’ by younger Christians as their spiritual Mum & Dad as the Lord has opened doors for us here in the UK.

The point is that, without “working at it” very much, we treasure our love and our relationship with both each other and with the Lord. Somehow, this must show through for others to pick up and latch on to. The Lord seems to be developing a ministry for us both individually and together in helping others develop their own relationships. Not that we have sought anything. All we have done is waited on the Lord for Him to show us where next to plant our feet.

With so many relationship breakdowns these days, I have to ask if we treasure the really important ones enough? Are we as selfless in those relationships as we are selfish in others? Does our relationship with God outweigh all others, or do the others outweigh our relationship with God? Don’t get me wrong – our relationships with each other are far from perfect, but we do actively seek to keep them strong. God gave us the gift of love for each other. The least we can do is to treasure those relationships and work on them so as to give Him some glory from them.

That way we have a chance of reflecting some of God’s love for us into others lives.