How to love your wife

 

I received the following from AJ Neufeld and wanted to pass it along.  Shared without permission--because we all need to hear it. 

Hey, men. 
I wanted to relay some news I heard today.  Dr. Jim Walters was a professor for 40 years at John Brown.  Almost everyone who has graduated from there since the 1970s until just a couple years ago has taken a course from him.  His wife Linda, who suffered from MS, passed away today.  The reason this is significant to you all is that this man was the personification of Christ’s love towards his wife.  She was wheelchair bound for as long as I knew them.  She couldn’t talk or even lift her hands.  And yet, he was almost never without her.  He took her to basketball games and to The Market Place to eat.  I witnessed him lovingly and slowly feeding her with a fork in one hand and a napkin in the other to catch the food that would fall from her mouth.  He would sit over her shoulder so he could whisper in her ear.  They were best friends.
 
I remember in a class I took from him once, he showed off his wedding picture.  She was gorgeous and he was puffed up and proud.  They looked like a couple madly in love.  He then told us how years later they found out she had MS and how she slowly began to lose functioning, from her legs, to hands and also her voice.  Someone once told him that he should divorce her and put her in a home because he’d done enough.  He should get on with his life.  Dr. Walters’ eyes flashed with righteous anger as he told our class that this person was a fool.  This person didn’t understand the love of God for us and how that affects a person.
 
Dr. Walters understood it well.  Long before his teaching days should have ended, he retired.  Linda had become his life and he couldn’t stand to be away from her anymore.  She needed him full time and he was happy to do it.  He wasn’t trapped by her inability to function.  Rather, he came alive when he was with her.  He loved her completely sacrificially in those last years.  She was unable to communicate or reciprocate her love to him, but he still smiled at her like a newlywed when they were out. 
 
I don’t claim to know the will of God.  But I know that He used Dr. Walters to affect me for all eternity because he superbly executed the job of loving his wife.  It was like watching art form at the hand of a Da Vinci.  But the real rub of it all is that Dr. Walters isn’t that special.  There is nothing about him that stands out as superior to any other man.  He simply understood that the God Who gave him salvation also gave him Linda and everything that came wrapped in that package was a treasure.
 
Men, you all have a treasure.  There are some really crummy things that happen to you and to your treasure (some worse than others).  But I pray you always remember that she is your second most precious gift ever given to you from your Maker.  And I pray that Christ would manifest Himself in you as you live out your days with her in such a way that someone might tell his friends that you affected them like Dr. Walters affected those of us who crossed his path.
 
Romans 5:6-10 NET
"For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.) But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?"


Thanks, AJ.
Brian


Coming Up:
6:15 Every Friday Morning: Band of Brothers meets at The Warehouse (across from Mama Carmen's behind and below Monarch Dental).  Tomorrow: Sausage rolls, muffins, coffee and orange juice.  Dr. Thomas Soerens teaching.

March 9-10
New Heights Men's Retreat led by Alex Hedgepeth and The Dog Soldiers.  Online registration will be available soon.