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FROZEN HARD

I can't imagine many things that are good when they are actually frozen.

  • Meet in the freezer needs to thaw out before cooking
  • Popsicles in the freezer need to thaw just a bit before they can actually be consumed
  • Feet frozen from cold weather are painful and hard to move in

All of these things (when frozen) are too hard to be of use.

When things are designed to be cool, room temperature, or even hot, but are instead frozen hard it's not good.

Jesus uses this frozen hardness to talk about the root of divorce.

MATTHEW 19:8

The Pharisees have Jesus in a line of questioning about divorce. His initial response is that marriage is man and women becoming one flesh, and so nothing and no one should take it apart.

They reply that Moses (the greatest prophet up until this point) allowed for certificates of divorce - for any and every reason. Jesus replies with:

8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so."

Notice that Jesus points to hardness of heart as the root cause of divorce.

  • Not unhappiness
  • Not falling out of love
  • Not even infidelity

He says the root cause of divorce is one or both of the people in the marriage allow their hearts that are intended to remain warm, tender, and kind towards the other, instead, to grow hard towards the other.

There's a lot that would intuitively or naturally allow a heart to grow hard - unmet expectations, betrayal, breach of trust, lack of intimacy, etc.

HOWEVER, it appears here that even through all of this (including infidelity) there is a narrow lane and process for keeping a heart from becoming hard.

STAYING TENDER

Staying tender towards one another is difficult.

Sometimes it's as easy as sharing a cup of coffee together in the morning or a glass in the evening.

Sometimes it's as easy praying for one another in the evening.

Sometimes it's as difficult as extended counseling.

Sometimes it's as difficult as a season of separation.

However, regardless of how easy or difficult staying tender is - it beats the alternative of allowing a heart to grow hard and ripping glued paper apart.