The Journey 120

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Read: Genesis 27
The “ Wall Street Journal” reported a very interesting news this week. One NFL team doing “HomeWork”. Sounds strange!!  Read on…..Every year each team in the NFL signs new players to play for their team and to see to it that by the signing of these players the teams do well in NFL. Millions of dollars are invested by the teams in this signing of the new athletes. This year one NFL team “The Jacksonville Jaguars” decided that the if they are investing on a player they will do some “HomeWork” before investing on a particular player.  The “Wall Street Journal” reported that when the Jaguars were in the process of  signing quarterback Chad Henne and wide receiver Laurent Robinson during the off-season, the Jaguars management  asked the athletes to bring their wives along during the interview process. This is something similar in India when a parent wants to admit their child for the first time in a school. Most of the school has made it mandatory that both the parent and the child should go through an interview process before the child is given admission in the Montessori section. This move was done by the Jaguar management because they feel that there is a positive relationship between good players and stable marriages. Many commentators and activist feel that this  move may anger feminist movement and people who are against the family system. But whether they like it or not Jacksonville Jaguar management feels that there is relationship between a player's family environment, and the way player performs in the playing arena. I believe what Jaguar management has proposed is something biblical.  Marriage and family are God ordained institutions and hence the success and the failure that we may have in our life depends on how we manage and build both these institutions. Thus stability and also instability in a persons professional and personal life depends on how stable his/her marital and family life is.
This week we start meditating on  new theme “ Transformation in my Family Life”. The portion that we will use for our meditation is from Genesis 27. The family that we will focus our attention is from the family life of Isaac and Rebecca. Here is one family who did not take pains to prepare and ground their marital life and hence their family life is also going through huge issues. When we observe the family dynamics of Isaac and Rebecca, one of the strange things that we find in that family is that, instead of strengthening their  commitment toward each other, each of them strengthens their relationship with the children that they love and also manipulate that child against their spouse. What a strange sight.  The primary commitment of the spouses is towards each other and only when this relationship is strengthened do the relationship of the parents with the children also get strengthened. When the primary relationship in the family is going through issues, then it would be manifested in both the husband, wife and children “Playing Games” in the context of the family environment. This is a term coined by the well known writer Eric Berne. If we want transformation to happen in our family life, I believe the spouses have a primary commitment to each other and it is in the strength of this commitment, that strengthens the other relationships in the family like the relationship with the kids. This also in the process brings about harmony in family life and also stability in the avenues that the spouses are involved. The spouse need to understand that they will make a qualitative difference in the life of their spouse. Whether this qualitative difference is for the better or for worse is decided by the individual spouse. Both Isaac and Rebecca make qualitative difference on each other, but that difference was distressing for each other. Hence this morning let us take a decision that as husband and wife, we will make a qualitative difference for the better in the life of our spouse.
What is the “Difference” that you make in your spouse?

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