On Being Desperate

I heard a message on Sunday in which an imaginary father, on meeting a young man who stated his readiness to marry his daughter, castigated the young man, in a speech which was of equal part funny and tragic, for being 'desperate'.

We laughed, as, I assume, we were meant to. But, all kidding aside, desperation is a good thing.

The word 'desperate' has a bad name, I'll grant you. It has a kind of physical background. One thinks of the drowning victim as being 'desperate' to get air, or the parent as searching 'desperately' for their lost child.

This makes it seem odd, for us, growing up as we did, to think of a young man searching 'desperately' for a wife. We see him as running around, gasping for air, 'desperately' talking to father after father, hoping against hope that one of them will give him a wife. Funny, eh?

But, wait a minute. Why are we laughing? Air is a good thing, a necessary thing. Sure, one could make a comedy sketch about it, but a real drowning should not be, must not be, funny.

Is marriage an equally good thing? Is the young man without a wife actually missing a vital part of his life? Surely, as Christians, we know the actual answer to that. Did not God, Himself, say, "It is not good for man to be alone."?

Surely it is the young man who is not desperately searching for a wife that we should be... not laughing at, but accusing of failing to seek for his own good with appropriate emotion. "He who finds a wife has found a good thing", no? "And obtains favor from the Lord". The man who is blessed by the Lord will have a wife, like a fruitful vine, and children, like olive plants, surrounding their table. So let's stop laughing at that 'desperate' young man and, instead, start chiding his church, and his father, and the father's of the young women, who are not 'letting him marry'.