slammed it on the floor, and screamed: “This means nothing to
you! Why did you sign it?” The glass in the frame shattered in a
thousand pieces. Melanie picked up the paper covenant and crum-
pled it.
While this scene unfolded, the children, who had been ban-
ished to an upstairs room, heard the tinkling glass and wanted to
come downstairs. They were curious about what had happened,
but Larry yelled at them to stay away. A sobbing Melanie and her
sobered husband swept up the glass and threw the broken frame
and covenant in a garbage can.
After this storm, the couple went in another room and contin-
ued their discussion in a more civilized manner.
Meanwhile the kids continued to beg. Melanie and Larry
relented and the children saw immediately the large blank spot on
the wall. Their nine-year-old son John, in particular, was upset
and kept coming to his parents telling them how bare the wall
looked and that something must be done about it. Melanie and
Larry reassured him that they would find something to hang on
the wall.
A while later John returned and began bugging his mom and
dad, saying he needed to show them something. They ignored
him for a few minutes, but finally John dragged them into the fam-
ily room. He pointed to the wall and said, “There, I fixed it!”
Larry and Melanie looked at each other and broke into tears.
On the wall hung their battered covenant. John had rescued the
crumpled paper from the trashcan, smoothed it out, wedged it into
the frame, and hung it back on the wall. This boy desperately
wanted to fix his parents’ marriage and believed re-hanging their
covenant was a good way to start the process. The covenant is still
on that wall today—no glass and wrinkled—but it hangs.
And John’s moving intervention did help spur Larry and
Melanie into a process of reconciliation....
Melanie wrote, “Isn’t it awesome how God used this situation
to break his [Larry’s] heart and move him towards repentance.”^4Yes, it is awesome what God can and will do to keep a family together.
He longs to turn millions of weak families into bastions of strength.
Will we join Him in saving homes in the new millennium?
Local Church Family Ministry in the New Millennium 27