About wives: She is a life witness

Jesus called us to be His witnesses, just as an intimate life partner is a witness to our own lives.

Both men and women need a witness to their lives. Jesus had four primary witnesses, the writers of the gospels, but He also relied on the rest of the twelve disciples and His faithful retinue. So the idea of having witnesses to our lives is nothing strange.

A life witness inside a marriage keeps us honest and true to ourselves, but it also reminds us of the fact that our life story is being recorded and will ultimately be told: “No comment” is also a recorded statement, so there is no escaping the fact that ultimately our lives will relate to others, either as an example or as a warning. Our most important audience obviously will be the Great God Himself, who will hold court so that relevant witnesses can validate our testimonies.

A marriage partner is a vital link in the establishment of our testimonial, because no one will know us as intimately or privately as our spouse – not a lover, a friend, a child or a parent. A spouse enjoys a unique proximity to our lives, because love, for however long it endures, is what brings the two together and enables them to open up, trust and be truly vulnerable over an extended period of life, to the extent of baring the soul, mind and body. That brings divorce into perspective, for it is the ultimate betrayal of our deepest secrets and most private realities. No wonder God despises it.

A witness, in the case of a spouse, will unconsciously record our lives and acquire a deep knowledge of the real self. The Old Testament writers faithfully recorded all of their history and traditions, noting both good and bad stories, to enable future readers to legitimize the narrative both in terms of context and honesty. Whether telling of David’s embarrassing faux pas or Abraham’s denial of his wife or Peter’s denial of Jesus, bible writers were dispassionate and objective in their recording of real life as it unraveled throughout the biblical era.

I could certainly speak of my own errors and mistakes, my own follies and misjudgments. I could regale you with stories that are so embarrassing to me. I think of the loss of our life savings on a business venture and the subsequent pain that has brought to my family. I could also speak of the many occasions when I somehow managed to upset people and drive away good relationships. I am at peace about those things now, because God has brought healing, resolved the underlying causes of my life crises and lifted me to a place of wholeness, but the journey would hold no meaning for me, my family or those around me, unless it had been authenticated by evidence of real world struggles. It is because those things were so real, that I now have a story to tell and as such it is a story that promises relevant hope to many in similar predicaments.

Consider that a biblical requirement of a priest was that he should be able to identify with the needs of the people. No wonder then that after Peter stumbled, Jesus picked him up and led him back to His own sheep – in that sense God qualified Peter for ministry based on his real world experiences. Our reasonable hope is that God will use our failures to qualify us, unlike the world which uses our failures to disqualify us. David and Moses were both restrained by the slow, humbling, unhurried and reflective life of shepherds until they too learnt to translate shepherding into real world contexts.

So our life witness will eventually become our most substantive credential. It matters little what degrees you have or how high you have climbed in social or corporate life, for life has a way of delivering great levelers that ultimately discredit or marginalize those credentials – heck even by fifty your qualifications offer little or no currency in the business world. The only credentials that last are embedded in your life story and how it relates to those who follow you. But the person best qualified to validate your story is the man or woman who has spent a lifetime walking right next to you and was required to share all your burdens, tears, joys, pleasures and disappointments along that dusty road.

(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com