The idea that ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those who talk about love. As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.
And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.
From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Being in love is not the same as loving someone. Think of love as creating a beautiful bubble; glistening, full of color and reflecting light. It is wonderful to behold. Then think of being in love as being inside the bubble. Everything one sees of the world is shaped by looking through the bubble. It also is beautiful, but it changes they way we perceive things.
Love creates beauty while being in love causes us to see through the eyes of love. They are both important parts of relationships. Yet when the bubble bursts (as they all do) we are still left with the love that created it. That is the love that holds a marriage together when the passion of being swept away has long gone.
Making bubbles,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 