It wasn’t quite dawn when my husband rose from bed and went into the kitchen. I saw the light flip on and off and wondered at his action. Then I recalled that the previous morning I’d yelped at the sight of an “intruder” on our kitchen counter. Translated: an undesirable creature of the six-legged variety. My husband knew my paranoia and immediately arrived to remove it. This morning he’d risen early to ensure our kitchen was bug-free so I could enter without concern. What a guy!
My husband awoke with me on his mind, putting my need before his own. To me, his action illustrates the love Paul describes in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Paul goes on, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (v. 28). Paul’s comparison of a husband’s love to the love of Christ pivots on how Jesus put our needs before His own. My husband is not afraid of such intruders. But he knows I am. And so he made my concern his own.
That principle doesn’t apply to husbands only. After the example of Jesus, each of us can lovingly sacrifice to help remove an intruder of stress, fear, shame, or anxiety so that someone can move more freely in the world.