The world has been fascinated with the Titanic long before the recent movie made its debut. In fact, Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember, has undergone 65 reprints. Several weeks ago we heard Jack Deere deliver a cutting-edge message at our church on the Titanic as a prophetic symbol for the church. You may easily extrapolate the basic message just upon hearing the subject matter.
However, since much of my life is given to another great institution called marriage, I could not but muse and mull for quite a while on the similarities between the gigantic ocean liner and many of the marriages I have encountered. One such tragedy is indelibly imprinted on my life, or I grew to personally care a great deal for this couple. In fact, they lived in a home and in the midst of a lifestyle that would be quite representative of a luxury liner. They had been married for nearly 35 years. For their entire married life this couple and their children, while they lived at home, were found on the church pew each Sunday morning. He, a leader in the church as well as in the business community, was a favored Sunday School teacher. She was a fervent student of the Bible and could sharpen her Biblical sword with the best of them.
She had another kind of sword in her arsenal as well. It was her tongue. This tongue could be sweet as honey, quite full of wit, yet could whip out some of the most cutting, biting remarks I've ever heard. And the main one on the receiving end of this sharp sword was her husband. Her critical eye rarely missed a thing about him--his tie, his shoes, his car, how he spent his time, how he did his work, how he sat, where he sat, and the list seemed to be endless. I guess he felt that way. After a multitude of warnings, begging, counseling with professionals and the pastor, suddenly the ship sunk. She arrived after a Bible study one morning, and there on the dressing table in the bedroom lay a piece of paper: "I love you and always have, but I can't live like this any longer. You can have everything. All I want is peace." And as she looked around, everything of his was gone as if he had never existed. Her world crumbled. Suddenly everything was clear, but it was too late. No chance for further discussion. No chance to renegotiate. No time for I'm sorry.
At 11:00 p.m. when Jack Phillips received the seventh warning from the Californian stating, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice," he radioed back, "Shut up, shut up," and went back to communicating frivolous messages from passengers to their friends and relatives on shore. Phillips had sent the first five messages regarding "a field of ice" ahead to higher ranking officers, but they were totally ignored, so he ignored the sixth and final warning. After all, "the ship was unsinkable."
What made the four-block-long ship unsinkable? The main argument made for this seemed to be its sixteen compartments which could be shut off individually. The ship could sustain water in the first four compartments and still stay afloat. No one could imagine an object large enough to hit all four. The iceberg, however, towered 100 feet above the water and 800 feet below. It managed to cut a gash in the first six compartments. I believe couples are deceived the same way. After all, there are many compartments that would seemingly sustain the "marriage ship"--the vows taken in the presence of witnesses and God, the children, friends and family, joint finances, church relationships, memories of Christmas, vacations, on and on.
Believe me, I have seen marriages be able to take some really hard hits--infidelity, abuse, and the list goes on--and still stay afloat. But I've seen that no marriage is unsinkable and that a relationship can only sustain so much damage. One should not be so naive as to think that just because it survived a really bad swounding, it will keep on surviving more and more damage. Not all marriages end in overt divorce, you will notice. Some die a quiet, unnoticeable death.
One could say that pride sunk the Titanic. Everything seems to lead back to that culprit. Even the fact that there were no binoculars aboard seems to be traceable to pride. Who could imagine that on this oceanliner, Frederick Fleet, the lookout perched in the Crow's Nest, had made a request for a pair of binoculars! Someone felt so cushy and secure that this provision which would appear to be a necessity was, in fact, not provided. In my musing on this subject, I keep hearing, "You have eyes to see, but you do not see. You have ears to hear, yet you do not hear." How many wives and husbands have, in fact, tried over and over to explain a particular area of dissatisfaction, only to have a gesture of change made, a mere tap of the little finger on the table of life.
I so believe that marriage is a garden to be tended, especially in our day and time. Maybe Albert and Etherl who lived out on the farm and were concerned about getting the crops planted and having shoes for the kids weren't facing the troubled waters marriages face today. There was a day and time where Etherl probably wasn't going anywhere even if Albert never said, "I love you," or even kissed her goodnight. That era is bygone. Proactivity is the only course open to those who want to strengthen and thrive. Binoculars. Wow! Do you have some? A man told me last week that he should have gone to a marriage seminar every six months, should have read some of those books that his wife kept bringing home, should have gone tot he classes offered at the church on relationships . . . but . . . well, you know the PRIDE word. The sixth compartment may have been hit. Time will tell if it's too late.
And then the end of the story--the lack of adequate lifeboats, only enough for 1,178, only half enough. In the fury, only 28 were in the first boat that held 68 passengers. Only 12 in another one. What a disaster! Unlike the Titanic, the children are the ones left on the sinking ship of divorce. Sometimes a wife or husband. . . while one is so selfish that he or she jumps into the lifeboat and leaves the others on the ship. But in my experience, the children are always left on the ship. They are, without fail, the victims.
Urgency. Vision. Humility. An equipped lookout. Eyes to see. Ears to hear. Diligence. All around us the messages are coming, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice." Are you apathetically throwing the messages away? I hope not.
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