Sara Cox sits in

From Leslie Griffiths, Methodist Minister:

For me, this has been the summer of all summers for fiftieth wedding anniversaries. I’ve seen a crowd, a host of golden marriages. Friends they were, one and all, celebrating half a century of what Jane Austen called “conjugal felicity”, happily married bliss.

 Our kids have reached the age when they’ve stopped partying just as my wife and I (ourselves in the 49th year of our married lives) are taking it up again. In a church hall, near a river bank and in a stately village hall over recent weeks, we’ve told all our old stories, laughed at all the old jokes, admired the bride and groom, made speeches, drunk too much and eaten everything that was bad for us. “Whilst there’s still time,” we whispered to ourselves in self-justification.

 I’ve spent plenty of time in the past campaigning for or affirming people in relationships of varying kinds. Common law unions, civil partnerships, people who’ve remarried after divorce and same sex couples too. There’ll never be a one-size-fits-all model of relationship. Much more important, it seems to me, is the task of encouraging everyone in a relationship of any kind to honour and respect their partner, to love and to cherish one another. We live at a time when abuse and violence abound as much within relationships as outside them. And the Bible has far more to say about how we treat one another in a relationship than it ever has about sexual orientation. Too often we allow our feelings about sexuality to obscure our view of how best to treat each other. In all this, of course, we shouldn’t forget or side-line the importance of traditional marriage – a union where two people, against the culture of the age, commit themselves to each other till death do them part.

 One last word. It’s an important part of any relationship that partners give each other space. That’s something I must remember now that I’m retired. My darling wife, who’s had years of having me out of the way, has reminded me more than once that she promised to remain faithful in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer but not, as far as she remembers, for lunch.