A Week of Fasting, A Night of Prayer

Have you ever felt that you and your spouse are as different as night and day – and that these differences are keeping you from experiencing the true unity that you expect from

marriage? Are night and day differences keeping you from experiencing unity with your parents or children, the church family where God has placed you or maybe even from experiencing the unity with God that is promised for those who love Him?

Maybe your view of unity is different than God's. 

Unity is the very first lesson taught in the Bible occurring at the very beginning of creation. After creating light, we are told that God separated the light from the darkness and called one day and the other night. Gen. 1:5 ends with the phrase “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

The Hebrew word for one here is different than the word that means the number one or first. It is the word “ehhad” and it means “unit”, a single thing comprised of a number of diverse elements. Light and darkness are different as, well, night and day, but they make up one day unit.

Here is how this applies to marriage. Genesis 2:24 says: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become a flesh unit (a flesh ehhad).

We see this same Hebrew word describing God Himself in Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is ehhad.” God, who is described as creating man in “our” image in Gen. 1:26 is here described as a unit. I can't help but see a reference to the Trinity.

How about in the New Testament? Although a different Greek word is recorded (heis), Jesus probably used the word ehhad as He prayed in Hebrew to His father about all of us, asking:

That they may all be one (heis/ehhad); even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one (heis/ehhad) even as we are one (heis/ehhad).

John 17:21,22 (RSV)

God wants us to be a unit with Him and with each other, even though we may be as different as night and day.

Doug Sachs

September 2013