Warning to you young man or woman lusting madly about outward beauty in choosing your spouse. My heart aches for our ignorance.
Beauty is vain! Beauty is vain! Beauty is vain!
I know we are humans and should naturally have these preferences. But if it exceeds 20% of what determines your choice, you are not safe. We are spirit, soul and body, in that order and never the reverse!
The body is dust, mere dust! At the slightest affliction it will vanish. Leave the curves alone, leave the broad shoulders, don't let them misdirect you. Stop despising and insulting your Spirit by thinking you can satisfy yourself by hunting down a spouse to suit your lust while neglecting the longings of your spirit and soul. (I finally understand why some people have beautiful spouses yet feel an unending emptiness one anniversary after another). We are worth more than the perishable. You are a spirit after the order of God your maker not just a cute guy or pretty woman.
Back to this marriage thing, your marriage will work better because of the merging of your souls not the compatibility of your physical appearances. It will also work because of the oneness of your spirits ( i.e. Oneness in Christ, for the christians). So a fair and tall woman may stomp the world with a dark and fat man because they are agreed in spirit and soul but that same fair and tall lady may end up a punching bag for a tall, fair and handsome man which appears to our eyes to be more compatible with her.
Seriously, this is where we miss it. I remember a teaching where a teacher of the word said marriage is first a carnal matter so marry a person you like. Yea, he is right that marriage is quite physical and you should marry what you like but it's a pity how much that saying has been stretched to the detriment of many. While it will be unthinkable to say you should close your eyes to marry, (of course this is someone you will wake up to see daily. But that is not priority), it is more damaging to marry with a mind clouded by physique than it is to close your eyes to marry. We are spirits in a body so marriage between two humans cannot be predominantly carnal. If the spirit and soul requirements don't flow, that beauty 'go tire you' sooner than later.
When the first wind blows, you will loose the value you had for that beauty and that will mark the beginning of your prison term in marriage.
I know majority will disagree, it's okay, but I just came here to say that beauty is vain!
Real fulfilment in life comes from the inner man to the man without so it's time we readjust our focus, not just in marriage but in life generally.
Very inspiring piece and almost all encompassing,except for the fact that a lot of the things that we right up,are actually easier said than done. Not by way of rebuttal to ur piece,but what happens in a scenario where a person finds the 'supposed' right spouse, prays about and makes all the necessary attempts and advances to build a relationship around the same person,but is being shut out. I've had a scenario of a girl who keeps on telling me that she would want to know me better before making up her mind about me,but the same person doesn't still give me the opportunity of doing the knowing. So if tomorrow,I end up knowing the wrong one who gave me the opportunity,will the person not also have a share of the blame. Please,let's start walking the talk.