Ecclesiastes 5:4-5, "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better it is that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay."
Today I celebrate the 17th anniversary of taking the following vow:
"Do you, Cheurie, take this man to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward? Wilt thou love & cherish him, honor & obey him, in sickness & health, for richer or for poorer, and forsaking all others cleave only unto him, so long as ye both shall live? If so, answer, I will."
To these words I very quietly, yet assuredly, answered "I will." Later on in the ceremony, I was asked to give a ring "as a token of my undying love and affection, 'til death do us part." That exchange ended with another vow where I said these words, "as God is my witness, I give you my promise." As the ceremony came to an end and the bride (that's me :-)) had been kissed, the preacher (my Daddy) said, "What God hath joined together let not man put assunder." Those words, of course, were taken from the Bible (KJB), found in Matthew 19:6. From that day on, I became a Groves.
These vows that I have quoted are considered archaic now, and the word obey is left out 99.9% of the time, because it infringes on a woman's rights, or so I'm told. However, I did not take these vows lightly, as the Lord saw fit to bless that union with four children whom also bear that same name.
When I was a child I was taught to be proud of who I was, and of my family name. That wasn't hard considering that my parents never gave me a reason not to. My in-laws worked equally as hard to do the same for their children. Thus, it is what I have tried to pass down to my own children. Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold." It is not by coincidence that the same chapter bears the verse that tells us "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it." Though I am by no means the perfect mother, I have tried (I'm still trying) to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Of all the many things that we try to teach our children today, character skills are very much lacking. Children today know little of honor, honesty or integrity. Sadly, for some, it is because they see very little of it in their own parents.
My grandparents talked of a day when a man's hand-shake was as good as any written agreement or contract. The children of today know nothing of this kind of honesty. My mother used to drive out to a farm every week to buy our milk. She would leave a check or cash in the refrigerator that was in the man's barn, and take the amount of milk we needed. There were many times when I'd see her lay her money on top of the several other peoples monies, that had been there before us. Can you even imagine such an arrangement in today's day and age? I cannot. We need to get back to the "old paths" where "a man's word is his bond."
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