The Promise of the Harvest: Stay Here

We live in a throwaway culture. If our phone gets slow, we buy a new one; if a show bores us in the first episode, we change the channel; and tragically, if marriage gets hard, society whispers that it is time to upgrade to a new model. But today, I want to invite you to sit down for a coffee with me and look a bit further, toward the finish line.

The world sells us the illusion that changing our partner is like restarting a video game, magically wiping away the problems. However, the reality is that giving up, unless there is a major biblical reason involved, rarely eliminates the winter from our lives. It simply makes us restart the cycle of seasons, but this time carrying the heavy baggage of pain and with a different person who will bring their own flaws to the table.

I want you to think about that beautiful image of two elderly people walking hand in hand in the park. They did not reach that magical level of intimacy because their life was a fairy tale or a perpetual summer. They got there because they decided to stay when the winter was harsh, when debts were overwhelming, or when romance seemed to have gone on vacation.