He answered, “Have you not read … ‘What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’?” Matthew 19:4a & 6b ESV1
Read Matthew 19:1-9
I thought one of our smoke detectors was chirping. I changed the battery, but the chirping continued. I assumed the replacement battery was bad, so I threw away that battery and installed a new one. The chirping continued. Naturally, I was convinced the unit must no longer be working. I planned on purchasing and installing another unit, but to hook up a new one, I needed to detach the clip which connected the current smoke detector to my home’s wiring. For some reason, I was unable to get the clip to release. So, the chirping continued.
My husband couldn’t help me change the smoke detector; he was on a business trip. So, I listened to the constant chirping for days. Finally, my parents came to visit; I asked my dad to try his hand at disconnecting the smoke detector. He was more successful than I had been. The smoke detector was detached, but the chirping continued.
It was my mom who discovered that the device which was signaling its need for a battery change wasn’t the smoke detector at all; it was the carbon monoxide detector! Once we changed the battery in the correct unit, the chirping quit. Day and night for the better part of a week, I had unnecessarily put up with the annoying noise. Because I was so sure that something was wrong with the smoke detector, I never considered the possibility that something else needed a new battery. I wonder how many times we experience needless suffering or cause avoidable pain because we are convinced of something which just is not true. In most such cases, much more is at stake than being slightly annoyed for a short period.