Virtues

You cannot plant a garden, by ignoring it, and expect to see fruit. Instead, you must do the hard work of pulling weeds and cultivating crops. In the same way, families require consistent effort over the long haul. We work on our families by cultivating kindness, forgiveness, time together, listening, and a host of other virtues. We must also weed out indiscipline, anger, bitterness, selfishness, rudeness, wandering eyes, and any other sin that effects our families.

If you inspect the garden every day to look for growth, you probably don’t see perceptible movement, but over the course of weeks you begin to see fruit. In the same way, we only see growth in our families over the course of time and this growth only takes place when spouses are committed to each other for the rest of their lives. Families grow because spouses are growing, children are growing and many people will not take the time to make the difficult changes that need to be made when they are not committed for the rest of their lives.

Families requires serious self-reflection, repentance, compassion, forgiveness, and self-forgetfulness. These virtues don’t form in our hearts overnight and it does not happen without painful changes. When you are in your marriage for the rest of your life, you will commit to making the changes you need to make because you value the glory of God and your spouse’s happiness and children’s joy.