Fortunately I was able to steer to the side of the road and arrange for the car to be towed.  After a few weeks in the shop, it was brought to life again.  I remember driving it away with a very uneasy feeling.  This car is 32 years old; it stranded me once….what if it does again?  The sense of security I’d had before was gone, replaced with a sense of uncertainty, even soberness.

As these thoughts marinated in my head, a much deeper realization came over me:  Who the heck do I think I am?  If I place my security in a car, and it fails me, how much less this life?

I began to realize that I lived much of my life with a similar sense of artificial security.  I often wake up, stand, breath, and move about without ever even thinking that these are each things that could be taken from me in an instant.  Yet I expect them as if they were deserved, and don’t think twice about how fragile life really is.

In Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells a story that speaks to these things.

“The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’  Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ “

There is a lesson here, that nothing should be taken for granted, for none of us knows the day that we will no longer be.

A few years ago I was on the way home from vacation with my family when I got a phone call that changed my life forever.  It was an insurance agent from USAA.  Once he confirmed my identity, he began asking questions about the fire at my father’s house.  Not knowing what he was talking about, I asked him some questions of my own.  It was a very awkward conversation, because it was then that I was made aware that my father had died suddenly in a very tragic accident.

This began one of the most painful seasons of my life.  It was a sudden and unexpected interruption that changed me forever, an experience that made me familiar with pain, depression, and sobriety of soul that I had never known before.  But in all the pain, I learned some things.

It is with that sobriety of soul that I now try to approach life much more slowly and resolutely.  Whether it be the sudden breakdown of a vehicle, or the sudden death of a loved one, these things remind us that life is fragile.

So, in the words of Francis Shaeffer, ‘How should we then live?’  My encouragement today is this:  Do so soberly.  Keep your hand to the plow, but keep your eyes on the sky.  Burn your candles, take risks, and say what you mean.  Take nothing for granted, and seek God in everything.  Make today matter, for it may be your last.

These words are the ingredients to a most intoxicating and joyful experience that we humans know as sexuality.  No matter what our culture, or perhaps our church, has made it to be, the Holy Bible presents it as quite wonderful.

It is possible that we really know very little about sex, no matter how much of a veteran we think we are in these things.  The evil American culture in which you and I live has twisted it into commerce.  Jon Foreman sings, “Sex is industry, the CEO of corporate policy.  Addictive, bittersweet; suburban youth, hail your so-called liberty.”  The statistics on pre-marital sex, pornography, and STDs are enough to sober and scare us.  Just walking through the mall, I feel I need a blindfold.

C.S. Lewis compares our culture’s obsession with sex to food.  Perhaps his words could wake us up to the low and polluted place we have assigned to sex.  He writes, “There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.  For the past twenty years you and I have been fed all day long on good solid lies about sex.”

What has the church done to address this?  Sadly, for the most part, it has made it worse.  Preachers are often scared to address this topic.  Most Christians I have talked with have never heard a message on sex, unless it is with condemning tone.  I wonder if we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.  Erotic love was there before the fall of mankind in the garden; the fall did not create eros; it only perverted it.  Karth Barth said the result of this for human sexuality has been a vacillation between evil eroticism, on one hand, and an evil absence of eroticism, on the other.

This brings me to the point of this article:  Sex was created by God and is good.  Very good in fact.  Heck, it’s amazing, I’m not ashamed to say.  And you shouldn’t be either.  Block out everything you’ve heard that tells you otherwise and think of this:  God invented sex.  He invented pleasure.  There are heights of ecstasy that are part of human reproduction, but are not necessary for the same.  Why?  Could it be that this is a wonder of God?  How could pleasure evolve?  Nay, I say, it is a gift, created by a benevolent Father.

These things are realized over a lifetime as we seek to find healing from the past and order our sexuality within the safe boundaries of God’s truth.  Consider this crazy idea:  a monogamous relationship between a man and woman without the worry of disease, abandonment, betrayal.  Wake up next to the same person every morning and grow together for a lifetime.  If this sounds good stuff, it is, and God came up with it. 

The Bible is stuffed with affirmation of the good of sexuality, portraying Divine approval of the gift of sex when submitted to God.  The Bible on marriage and sex?  Try this: “Bless your fresh-flowing fountain!  Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!  Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose—be always intoxicated with her love!  Nourish and cherish your wife.  Enjoy one another deeply!”

In the season of Valentine’s day, may we invite the truth of God into this most sacred part of our humanity.

http://www.familylife.com/site/c.dnJHKLNnFoG/b.6149579/k.EA2E/The_Art_of_Marriage.htm