Love Our Spouses Series

Introduction

Video Ill.: I Love My Wife — The Skit Guys

The Stories Behind the Heart Emoji

Source: Marilyn Yalom, The Amorous Heart (Basic Books, 2018), pages 219-223

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The Heart Emoji. How many of you have used the heart emoji when texting?

Do you know where it came from?

In 1977 the heart icon became a verb. The “I??NY” Logo was created to boost morale for a city that was in severe crisis. Trash piled up on the streets, the crime rate spiked, and New York City was near bankruptcy. Hired by the city to design an image that would increase tourism, Milton Glaser created the famous logo that has since become both a cliché and a meme.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, New Yorkers had tragic reasons for loving their city all the more. Glaser even designed a modified version of his logo: "I??NY More than Ever.”

A few years earlier, a new graphic form appeared that also played on the heart image. In 1999 the Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo released the first emoji made specifically for mobile communication. The original 176 emoji’s were rendered in black and white, before they were painted one of six colors. Among the original 176 emojis there were five of the heart. Today our online messages are regularly punctuated by heart emojis in multiple colors and combinations.

This morning, for the love of family, we are to “heart” our spouses.

What should that look like?

How should we love our spouses?

Erich Fromm, “The Art of Loving”

Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving, writes, “Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment or decision.”

Love is not just a feeling, an emotion that we feel and experience.

Love is something that must be put into action. Love is a decision — a judgment we make — an effort we make.

Mother Teresa once said, “Love cannot remain by itself — it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service.”

Paul, instructs husbands in Ephesians 5:

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5, NIV)

Over in Titus 2, Paul instructs Titus how younger women are to be taught by the older women in the church.

3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. (Titus 2, NIV)

The picture of the marriage of a man and a woman is a picture of Jesus and His bride, the church.

How should we love our spouses? The same way Jesus loves the church.

Our love must be sacrificial.

Sacrifice of a Husband

Source: Men of Integrity, Vol. 1, no. 2.

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According to Stand Firm, although Johnny Oates managed the Texas Rangers, he was no Lone Ranger — at that time, when he took the manager position with the Rangers in 1995, he had a wife and three kids. He also had a mind set on reaching the World Series again. Those ambitions controlled him until he decided baseball would no longer be his god.

Oates's wife was hospitalized for emotional and physical exhaustion in April 1995. The timing? His first season with the Rangers was opening.

Yet he had the courage to ask for a leave of absence to spend time with his sick wife. His assistants could handle the dugout. No one else could do the husbanding.