Marriage in our Cells?

My wife and I have been reading the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything," by Bill Bryson. It's a humorously written history of the progression of human understanding of the natural sciences. We just finished reading a section talking about the discovery of DNA. Being people who think about marriage a lot, we were pleasantly surprised to find this statement in a discussion of the world at a cellular level:

"No one could understand how DNA could possibly be getting messages to the proteins. The answer, we now know, was RNA, or ribonucleic acid, which acts as an interpreter between the two. It is a notable oddity of biology that DNA and proteins don't speak the same language. For almost four billion years they have been the living world's great double act, and yet they answer to mutually incompatible codes, as if one spoke Spanish and the other Hindi. To communicate they need a mediator in the form of RNA. Working with a kind of chemical clerk called a ribosome, RNA translates information from a cell's DNA into terms proteins can understand and act upon."

A man and woman in a state of marriage are also "the living world's great double act," and yet they too speak very different languages; at times seeming to be "mutually incompatible." Yet together they form the building blocks of life, much the way DNA and protein do.

We can often be discouraged by this thought. "Do you mean we will always speak different languages?" Yes. But the hope lies in the existence of RNA! There is a way for a man and woman to communicate well, to become a complementary and useful working unit... a power for good. So what is the "RNA" for men and women in marriage?

Like RNA it probably varies for each couple. For us it involves a strong relationship with God. It involves a daily choice to learn to understand our spouse's language. It involves a faith in the fact that marriage does work! It involves loving our spouse more than we love ourselves.

What is the RNA for your marriage? We hope to help you find it, with the thoughts in this blog.

You and your spouse were created to be building blocks for spiritual life! All of creation reflects that truth.