







"Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:14-16
“After Lucas, the artist, had taken a wife and the wedding was over, he always desired to be next to his bride. He had a good friend who said to him, ‘Friend, don’t do that. Before a half-year is gone you will have had enough of that. There won’t be a maid in your house whom you won’t prefer to your wife.’ And so it is. We hate the things that are present and we love those that are absent. As Ovid wrote, ‘What we may have [does not please us]; it’s what we may not have that excites our passion.’ This is the weakness of our nature. Then the devil comes and introduces hatred, suspicion, and concupiscence on both sides, and these cause desertion. It’s easy enough to get a wife, but to love her with constancy is difficult. A man who can do this has reason to thank our Lord for it. Accordingly, if a man intends to take a wife, let him be serious about it and pray to God, ‘Dear Lord God, if it be thy divine will that I continue to live without a wife, help me to do so. If not, bestow upon me a good, pious girl with whom I may spend all my life, whom I hold dear, and who loves me.’”
—Martin Luther, Table Talk [WA TR V no. 5524] p. 214.