A young store manager went to work and told my friend that his ‘partner’ had left him. While he was at work the previous day, she had hired a removal truck and taken everything! “Even those little ornaments scattered around the house were gone,” he said. My friend commiserated with the manager, but the manager said, “It’s no big deal, I’ll get into another relationship.” At which point my friend said, “Well, what have you got to lose?”
The managers mother had not viewed the situation as lightly as her son. When she stood in the doorway of the empty house with her son, she smacked him on back of the head, and said, “I told you so!”
“I told you so!” are probably the four most bitter pills a man may need to swallow; especially when they are deserved.
No one wants to be told that they were warned not to get into a relationship that was doomed before it started. Doomed love may be blind, but it is no less exhilarating.
Samson would have saved himself a lot of heartache if he’d listened to his mother. Tragically, following his heart and hormones lead to humiliation and blindness.
Esau upset his mother to distraction over his marriages to Hittite women (Genesis 27:46). Acknowledging the warning, and seeing that his foreign wives were also an issue with his father, Esau married one of Ishmael’s daughters (Genesis 28:6). The Edomites followed in the steps of their father.
Solomon, though the sharpest pencil in the case, also wrote the story of his own demise. He really did believe that his political marriages to pagan wives would not affect his faith in God. Scripture tells us, “His wives turned his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4).
A wise man once said “There’s nothing like a good marriage…and there’s nothing like a bad one too!”
It goes without saying that Christians want the best for all marriages. Nowhere else is the love that Christ has for his church reflected more than in the relationship between a man and his wife (Ephesians 5:22-33).
However, it should also go without saying that if your mother is likely to say, “I told you so!” it would be wise to stop and listen.
What have you got to lose? Too much!
John Staiger
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