Christmas-Tree Parable
Theme of the Week: Your Winning Combination
Thursday, May 21, 2009
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together" (Matthew 19:6). Bonus Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12, 18–27
Slats Grobnik [who sells Christmas trees] remembers one couple on the hunt for a Christmas tree. The guy was skinny with a big Adam's apple and small chin, and she was kind of pretty. But both wore clothes from the bottom of the Salvation Army store bin.
After seeing only trees that were too expensive, they found a Scotch pine that was okay on one side, but pretty bare on the other. Then they picked up another tree that wasn't much better—full on one side, scraggly on the other. She whispered something, and he asked if $3 would be okay. Slats figured both trees wouldn't be sold, so he agreed.
A few days later Slats was walking down the street and saw a beautiful tree in the couple's apartment. It was thick and well rounded. He knocked on their door, and they told him how they worked the two trees close together where the branches were thin. Then they tied the trunks together. The branches overlapped and formed a tree so thick you couldn't see the wire.
"So that's the secret," Slats asserts. "You take two trees that have flaws, that maybe nobody else would want. If you put them together just right, you can come up with something really beautiful."
—Mike Royko in One More Time
My Response: What flaws of mine has my wife covered for me? Which flaws could I cover for her?
Thought to Apply: The wonderful thing you do for your marriage is to share that part of you that is different from your mate. —Neil Clark Warren (psychologist)
One More Time (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999).{__}
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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Help me, Lord, to build a strong marriage by appreciating and benefitting from the ways I and my wife are different by your good design.
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