So I said, “Let’s talk about this fight you had. She said, “You won’t believe what he just told me!” I said, “What did he just tell you?” She said, “He just told me, that ever since he was a little boy, he’s always gone deer hunting, he’s never missed a year of deer hunting. And he’s just told me, that our wedding day is on the opening day of deer hunting. And he wants us to go for our honeymoon, deer hunting!” Well, I understood that, he’s from Wisconsin!
So then he enters the conversation, rather reluctantly. He says, “I go to the Symphony with you, don’t I?” And I realized we had a problem here! I said, “Well, marriage is all about ‘give and take’ and you will have to ‘give and take’ a little bit here.” I said to her, “Look, he loves shooting things, and you love music. So go with him while he shoots things, and take your boombox and play Mozart in the woods.” And he said, “It will frighten the deer away!” I said, “Well, that’s not all bad!” He said, “No, that wouldn’t work!”
I said, “Okay, I won’t give up that easily.” I said to him, “You like shooting things, and she likes music. Get two tickets in the balcony, take your gun, and see if you can bag a cellist.” She didn’t approve of that either.
So they obviously had a problem here, but then a wonderful thing happened. I saw a ghost of a smile and then a little chuckle, and then they actually started to laugh at their own incredible childishness and selfishness. I said to them, “Why in the world, do you two want to get married? You are so incredibly selfish. It won’t work! You’ve got to leave and say that this new union is what we are now about.”
And you go to cleave. The word for cleave that is used in the New Testament comes from the word for “glue.” I often tell a young couple when they’re going to get married, “Listen, what this means to you, young man, is this: If you choose to go through with this wedding, you are going to stick with her through hell or high water!” Now we don’t say that in the service – we do say, for “richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” – but that’s what it means. You have got to stick with her!
Then I say to this sweet little gal, who is going to leave her mama and everything that she’s understood, and she’s going to be married to this great big character, and I say, “Honey, you are now stuck with him! And if you are not ready for that, don’t do it!” Because you see, you don’t mess with marriage. It’s not a human idea that you experiment with; it’s a divine idea that you don’t mess with! From the beginning of creation, God created male and female. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”