"Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever."

2 Samuel 7:16

How much of the media's message is about how nothing lasts forever? We are constantly bombarded with how marriages, families, relationships and the world are breaking down. When I speak at conferences with thousands of youth and we teach the truth that God's love and kingdom are forever, I often wonder how many of them will really believe that in the days, weeks and years after they leave in a media-blitzed society where the message of God's everlasting love and kingdom is not popular and often gets drowned out.

Divorce can be so devastating. Little kids just want their mom and dad together. It is amazing how they will overlook how cruel or unfaithful their parents are to each other and hope against all hope they will stay together no matter how bad it gets between them. Children want homes that last forever and they know that both mom and dad need to be at the center of those homes. This deep desire is based on being made in the image of God whose kingdom and love last forever. God does not divorce.

Marriage is a public sacrament that teaches the whole world that God's kingdom and love last forever. That is why the church does not allow pre-nuptial agreements. These agreements are contracts and if the contract is broken then the love and marriage ends. But how God lives in marriages and homes is with a love that will not end. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, forgives all things and seeks to work out all things. Marriage, if it is true, profoundly images that God's kingdom and love last forever and a pre-nuptial is saying that may or may not be the case.

Blaise Paschal said that God made us in his image and we returned the favor. Making God in our image is a very dangerous practice to our health which many of us are involved in. If we base God on marriages or what the media teaches, we might well come to wonder how anything can last. How difficult is it for a young child of a divorce, whose only wish is that mom and dad would stay together (no matter the cost), to believe in a God who does not?

We base our lives on God's everlasting kingdom and love. Much of the media militates against what we base our lives on. What teaching will we follow? Are we Sons/Daughters of God or son's/daughters of the media? Twenty-four hours a day the media is bombarding us with bombs that destroy belief in enduring love. What if we used our free-will and turned off the media dial and tuned into the God dial where we follow the truth that his house and kingdom and love last forever? We come to know this by believing we are God's daughters and sons, made in his image, not made in the image of the media.

+Fr. John

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