Chapter 7: The Deeper Meaning of Marriage 1. The Higher Needs

Life at its best is a spiritual venture having a supreme goal and purpose. Our fellowship with one another is most complete when together we realize that the foundations of our marriage, as of our being, are in God, who is the greater Love beyond, beneath and within our human love.

Sometimes persons are ill at ease and unhappy mainly because they fail to meet the needs of the higher side of their nature. Man cannot live by bread alone, and a family cannot live in material things and passing events alone. Deep in the heart are spiritual needs which are like hunger and thirst, the repression of which throws life out of balance and robs it of its richest meaning.

We need to be adjusted not only to one another in the family, but to life and to God. Every family needs a dynamic of conviction and an ultimate goal for its striving. We use the term religion to indicate the spirit of love in its highest and most practical sense.

If we give care to the foundations our homemaking ventures will be secure. There will also be the satisfaction of feeling that our home is a part of God's kingdom on earth. It adds immensely to the joy of homemaking to realize that we are building with God and that His laws are on our side to help us in preserving and increasing the happiness of the home.

There is something about the habit of living with God, who is love, which gives a fuller splendor to our family relationships. When parenthood comes the parents stand in the place of God to the little child. In order to be prepared for such a responsibility they must, of course, have God in the home before the children arrive.

Religion is a means of laying hold upon a wisdom greater than our own as we look to the objectives of the voyage which we are taking. It does not mean forgetting daily concerns in order to concentrate upon God, but finding God, like light and power in the midst of all our relationships. "A flash of gorgeous knowledge of the presence and beauty of God may come through some earthly love, that life-giving emotion which makes us part of the Creator and bestows a cosmic consciousness that links us with all creation." Something of this consciousness was expressed in the words of a husband who said to his wife, "In your eyes, my darling, I have seen the Infinite."