25th Celebration

When we married 25 years ago I made a promise to Jamie that I would take her to Germany. It took a few years (25 to be exact) but we did it last November. We've been many places over the years but never to Germany where I had spent the Summer before College in 1976.

We arrived in Munich and immediately fell in love with the places and people there. We always like to get immersed into the culture so we rode the subway into the center of Munich called the Mareinplatz. We took a walking tour of the town given by a college student from Canada. She showed us the Monk who symbolizes Munich. In one hand he holds a bible, his other hand is raised with two fingers in the air. She said he was ordering two beers. Don't know if that's true but it sounded good(Germans love their beer and in fact the German purity laws mandate how it is to be brewed).

We wanted to know what is the state of marriage in Germany? Watching people on the subway and around the town we wondered how are their relationships? We watched young mothers with their children on the trains and subways. One morning we were walking through a park and photographed a young father with his little girl playing among the statues.

Churches are not well attended in Germany. The ornate buildings are beautiful to look at but are empty inside. They seem to rely upon tourists to fund their operation with a healthy dose of government funds generated from the church tax. Our relationship with God is the foundation of marriage. That relationship is nurtured by the church. Without that, there is little hope for a healthy, happy, whole and successful marriage. Nurture your marriage by nurturing your relationship with God.