Genesis 24

Yeah, but that was olden times. We live in the modern age, the old ways don’t apply. Well, let me tell you a true story. I will tell it, as best I can, based on what I’ve been told.

She first saw him when she was 15. The ball team had all shaved their heads. He rolled by in a car and waved at her and her friend on the street. She turned to her friend and asked, “Who was that ugly boy?”

She met him again two years later at a church teens Valentine party. She didn’t know the pastor had arranged for him to drive her home after the party. On the way home he asked her for a date. The next day she rode with him all day as he worked driving a grain truck. She was a bit backward, and would not eat in front of him all day. After work he took her to the dairy queen. He ordered two pineapple milkshakes, and she ate for the first time that day. He asked her out for the next night.

The second date ended up at the dairy queen again, and he ordered pineapple milkshakes. He also asked her to marry him. She told him she would pray about it. Later that night in prayer she told God, “If you want me to marry him, you’re going to have to give me a love for him.” She will tell you that her love for him had to have come from God, because when he asked her to marry him, she did not even like him. They were married a few months later, four days after she turned 19. Later she finally got around to telling him she doesn’t like pineapple milkshakes.

Three and half years later they had three kids in diapers. He had started to drink. A problem with alcohol runs in his family. For several years he was gone. Once he returned there were still some problems and the marriage ended in divorce. The day they walked out of the courthouse he knew he had made the biggest mistake of his life. He called her almost immediately and wanted to remarry. He promised to stop drinking and settle down. She made him wait one year to the day, and they remarried.

Not counting the one year divorce, they have been married for 62 years. She says she loves him more today than the day she married him. She says their marriage sometimes required work, but it has been worth the effort. He jokes, and says she’s one lucky woman. He knows it’s not luck; they have been blessed by God. You might say Genesis 24 was the olden days. They’re 82 years old. She will tell you that when you walk with God, the olden days are the golden days.