Faithfulness is How Love Endures

Last weekend, Christa and I celebrated my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. They got married on August 1, 1964 in Baltimore. The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was number one on Billboard Hot 100. President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act into the law the previous month. The Tokyo Olympics would take place early that fall.  

So much has changed since then. So much has changed for them. And so little. The things that drew my parents to each other--and drove them nuts about each other--haven’t changed all that much in sixty years. I still wonder sometimes how they ended up together. 

But their marriage has taught me that a relationship is more than who you chose. It’s also about who you choose. And they’ve chosen each other over and over and over. For better--children, grandchildren, friendships, church life, and summer vacations--and worse: the death of family members and friends, job crises, church life, and summer vacations. You know, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. 

I think this is the kind of faithfulness Paul had in mind when he said that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” My parents express their love in different ways. Thoughtful gifts. Acts of service. Appreciation for each other’s strengths. Gratitude that the other one puts up with their frailties. Through all the things life has thrown at them, they have stuck by each other. Faithfulness is how love endures. And that’s why, when Paul finishes singing the praises of love’s qualities, he concludes, “Love never ends.”  

-David Neumann