Help of a Different Kind

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I will make him an help meet for him (Genesis 2:18).

Make for him will I a helper as his complement (Concordant).

Husbands are discouraged in their ministry by what they consider to be their “inadequate wife.” “After all,” they lament, “She doesn’t qualify as a helper.” Perhaps this is true. In some cases this situation results from the man having acted rashly and not taking the time to have noted this deficiency prior to his taking on the responsibilities of a covenant of marriage. Other men may contend that she has become unhelpful since the covenant was established; but are they not then suggesting that their wife somehow has become unhelpful while under their husbandly ministry of nurture and loving care?

The reality of the divine method is that even an apparently “unhelpful” wife is indeed of great assistance to her husband. As hard as it is in the middle of our greatest trials, we must never forget that our “affliction” is divinely “working for us” (II Corinthians 4:17), or, as the CV says, “is producing for us a transcendently transcendent eonian burden of glory.” When faith grasps this, husbands will, with Paul, be able to “be glorying also in afflictions” (Romans 5:3).

Glorying in our afflictions is a lesson we must learn repeatedly, and there is no better place to learn it than in the home.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
(Excerpted from his upcoming book, Wife Loving)