Most people don’t realize it, but the moon doesn’t technically orbit the earth. Instead, both the earth and moon orbit around their common center of mass. Admittedly, this center of mass is located within the earth, but that’s beside the point. In fact, because the moon is so large in proportion to the earth, the earth-moon system is sometimes considered a double planet and what affects one, affects the other. And both the earth and moon dance together around the sun.
Our lives as a Christian married couple are much the same. They are intertwined, orbiting a common center and at the same time in a much larger orbit around God. We dance through life, sometimes in joy, others in mourning, all the while reflecting the light of God to our partner. To maintain this, though, one partner cannot have an excess of “gravity” in respect to the other, it must be a partnership of mutual respect and love. Only then can the marriage shrug off the pains and heartache afflicted by daily life. And our orbit about God provides additional benefits, as His influence steadies us and maintains our greater orbit about Him.
The problems come when we allow other “planets” to perturb our orbits. If we allow these outside forces a greater influence on our orbit than our partner or God it’s all too easy for the delicate dance to be disrupted and for one (or both) of the partners to be stripped away. This is especially true when the partners’ mutual influence begins to wane and they draw apart, it becomes easy for another party to slip in and supercede one of the partners.