What Is Christian Marriage?

By:  R. Robert Creech, Ph.D.
© ExploreGod.com

We hear a lot about Christian marriages being different, but what is it that makes a marriage “Christian”?

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.Michel de Montaigne1

Marriage has gotten quite a bad reputation over the years. The butt of a seemingly infinite number of jokes, matrimony is a source of endless social commentary, gender politics, and governmental debate.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.Ambrose Bierce2

In the United States, marriage has fallen upon particularly hard times. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to marry.4 In fact, less than half of current US households are made up of married couples.5 The percentage of Americans who have never married is growing6 while the number of couples living together without marrying is increasing exponentially.7 Meanwhile, more and more children are born to single mothers.8

One should always be in love. That’s the reason one should never marry.Oscar Wilde3

To top it all off, America still has the highest divorce rate among Western nations and the highest incidence of single-parent families of any industrialized nation.9 There’s no denying that the landscape of the American family has changed radically over the past fifty years.

Marriage and Culture

These statistics raise questions about the value and meaning of marriage in contemporary American culture. Given changes in reproductive technology, shifts in cultural attitudes about sexual morality, and the apparent failure of marriage as an ideal relationship, has marriage become irrelevant?

Though it might seem so, sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Ueker recently reported that the American youth are as interested in marriage as at any time—more than 95 percent intend to marry someday.10

But from romance novels to reality TV to movies, unrealistic expectations and false understandings about love, marriage, and romance are easily perpetuated. As a result, both those seeking out a marriage partner and those trying to stay in a marriage relationship struggle with misunderstandings of the definition of that relationship itself.

Can the Christian faith make a difference in this understanding and the quest for a meaningful marriage?

Marriage and Faith

Though marriage is not the distinctive domain of the Christian church, the Bible and influential Christian thinkers do have quite a bit to say on the matter.11 So what makes a marriage a Christian marriage?

Clearly, simply being religious or professing Christian beliefs isn’t a cure-all; it doesn’t guarantee a long-lasting, blissful marriage. To answer our questions, we must look at the essential elements of Christian marriage and see how they differ from other approaches to the marriage relationship.

As early as the first century, Christian writers have commented on the relationship between their faith and marriage. One writer, Paul, penned these words:

Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.13

In these verses, Paul compares the relationship between husband and wife to the relationship between Jesus and the church. This has incredibly important implications for the nature of Christian marriage.

The Covenant of Marriage

Christians approach marriage as a covenant, a relationship based on promises and commitment, not just feelings—though love is most certainly involved.14

The concept of marriage as a covenant is rooted in the Hebrew faith, and early Christians preserved the belief as well.15 God’s covenant with Israel was founded on his promise to be faithful to Israel. The Hebrew people promised faithfulness to God as well, though the Bible doesn’t hide that they struggled—and often failed—to keep that pledge. Like God with the Israelites, Jesus established what he called a “new covenant” with his followers.16

To speak of marriage as a covenant is to say that the partners make mutual promises about the way they will choose to live in the future, not just declarations of how they feel in the present. The endeavor to live into those promises—remaining faithful to their covenant—will shape their characters over the years.

Christian Love

Christian marriage is also distinctively based on agapē, the Greek word used in Jesus’ teachings and early Christian writings to describe the kind of love God expresses to human beings. Agapē has nothing to do with the fanciful concepts of romantic love upon which so many American cultural marriage myths are founded.

Despite how pleasurable such feelings may be at the outset of a relationship, they seldom have the staying power to withstand a lifetime of ups and downs—the “for better or for worse” of matrimony.17

Agapē is an entirely different concept, so important that Paul devoted a whole section of his first letter to the Corinthians to defining it.You may have heard a well-known phrase from this section: “Love is patient, love is kind.” Paul then goes on to describe agapē as a sacrificial way of loving others.18

This kind of unconditional love—or an active striving to live out this kind of love daily—marks a genuinely Christian marriage, just as it characterizes an authentically Christian life.19 Agapē is found in an active choice one makes about how to behave toward another, not a conditional feeling one has toward someone.20 Agapē is based on the deliberate choices of the lover, not the responses of the beloved.

Christ-Centered Marriage

Perhaps the most distinct characteristic of Christian marriage—which makes the other two possible—is that it is intentionally centered on Jesus Christ. Each spouse continuously works to know, love, and obey Jesus, and to follow his example.

In this way, husband and wife learn how to express agapē and remain faithful to their covenant. As they practice the Christian faith together, they move toward each other, growing together in love and unity.

But what about a marriage in which only one spouse is a follower of Jesus? Could that marriage ever be a “Christian marriage”?

Paul actually writes about such a case in 1 Corinthians 7:12–16.21 He urges the believing partner to stay married to their unbelieving spouse because of the believer’s influence on their partner and children. One person who is seeking to follow Jesus Christ, learning to live out of agapē, and keeping the promises of the covenant brings Christ’s presence into the marriage.

Constant Pursuit

Christian or not, marriage is difficult for any couple to sustain over a lifetime. Life’s trials—the pressure of making a living, of parenting, of resisting temptations to unfaithfulness or selfishness—can strain any marriage.

But Christian marriage offers hope. The hope that a husband and wife, by intentionally choosing to learn how to love faithfully and sacrificially as Jesus did, may keep their covenant promises for a lifetime.

  1. Michel de Montaigne, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/micheldemo106657.html, accessed January 31, 2013.
  2. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993), p. 75.
  3. Oscar Wilde, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/57649-one-should-always-be-in-love-that-s-the-reason-one, accessed January 31, 2013.
  4. The marriage rate (the number of marriages per 1,000 people) remained stable from 1960 until 1997. But by 2010 it had decreased more than 23 percent. “National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 10, 2010, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm, accessed January 3, 2013.
  5. In 1960 married couples made up almost three-fourths of all households. By 1998 married couples were just more than one-half of all households. In 2010 only 48 percent of American households were married. “Households and Families: 2010,” 2010 Census Briefs (C2010-BR 14: April 2012), table 2, p. 5; figure 2, p. 6. Available at http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-14.pdf.
  6. The percentage of adults who have never married increased by 16 percent between 1980 and 1997. William Bennett, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators: American Society at the End of the 20th Century, updated and expanded, (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 1999), 64–65.
  7. The number of couples living together without marrying increased from 439,000 in 1960 to 4.24 million in 1998.  Ibid.
    Currently 7.7 million couples are in unmarried households, up more than 41 percent since 2000. “Households and Families: 2010,” 2010 Census Briefs (C2010-BR 14: April 2012), table 2, p. 3. Actual quotation: “Overall, the unmarried partner population numbered 7.7 million in 2010 and grew 41 percent between 2000 and 2010, four times as fast as the overall household population (10 percent).” Available at http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-14.pdf.
  8. Between 1960 and 1997, the number of births out of wedlock increased by 511 percent. Births to unmarried women accounted for about one-third of all births in the 1990s. Bennett, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, 47.
    By 2010 the number of births to unmarried women had increased from 224,300 in 1960 to 1,633,471, an increase of 728 percent. “FastStats—Unmarried Childbearing, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm, accessed January 12, 2013.
  9. “Divorce Rate (Most Recent) by Country,” NationMaster.com, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate, accessed January 12, 2013.
    Since 1960 the US has experienced a 200 percent increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes. Bennett, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, 4.
    The percentage of children living in a two-parent home has held constant from 1998 until 2009 at about 6 percent. “Living Arrangements of Children: 2009,” Household and Economic Studies (P70-126: June 2011), table 1, p. 4. Available at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p70-126.pdf.
  10. Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 169–170.
  11. Moreover, Christian people are not the only ones who can learn to do marriage well. Christian thinkers have described marriage as a part of “common grace,” the gifts God has given to all people.
  12. The Holy Bible, New International Version © 2011, Ephesians 5:28–33.
  13. A covenant is a “formal, solemn, and binding agreement.” Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/covenant.
  14. The Holy Bible, Malachi 2:13–14. “Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, ‘Why?’ It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.”
  15. The Holy Bible, Luke 22:20. “In the same way, after the supper [Jesus] took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’”
  16. C. S. Lewis presents a particularly excellent description of this concept: “Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing . . . You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced  by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”  C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1952), 108-109.
  17. The Holy Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:4–7. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
  18. The Holy Bible, John 13:34 –35. “‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’”
  19. You’ll often hear married couples discuss the fact that they don’t always feel “in love” with their spouse. Agapē is what enables the two to remain committed to their covenant through rough times.
  20. “To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?”
  21. Photo Credit: Jasmine Fitzwilliam.
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God, Are You There?

By:  Leigh McLeroy

© ExploreGod.com

I feel alone. I pray, but God is silent. At these times, I wonder if God is even there.

You’re lonely. You’re worried. You’re frustrated. You’re desperate. You don’t know where to turn, so you call out to God. You pray your best prayers. And . . . crickets. Nothing. As far as you can tell, God is silent. He’s indifferent.

That is a perfectly logical conclusion. After all, if you told a friend all your troubles and they sat silent as a stone—no advice, no gesture of empathy, no words of encouragement—wouldn’t you wonder if they’d gone deaf, or worse, just didn’t care? What, then, are we to make of the silence of God?

Who’s There?

When someone gives us “the silent treatment,” we run through a mental checklist: Have I offended him? Failed to keep a promise? Behaved badly? We imagine that if we can attribute the silent party’s unresponsiveness to some egregious action of our own, perhaps we can make amends and return to speaking terms. The burden, we believe, is on us.

But “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.”1 Perhaps the first error we make in understanding God’s silence is failing to understand his nature. We forget that God is not a man, and we attribute human motives and emotions to him in an attempt to explain his actions. But our ways, he says plainly, are not his ways.2

And while other human beings might predicate their responses to us on our behavior—good or bad—God does not. His behavior is an outflowing of his character, not our own. And his very nature is love.3

Silence and the Saints

“It’s not very loving,” you might say, “for someone who loves you to be silent.” But silence from God has been experienced by many devoted God-followers to whom you might assume God would never stop speaking. Even Mother Teresa wrote privately that she failed to sense God’s presence in her life for more than fifty years—an astounding confession from a woman whose love for God produced so many good works.

“Jesus has a very special love for you,” she wrote to one of her mentors, [but] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.”4 Mother Teresa could not explain God’s silence, but she did not question his love—perhaps because she knew that God’s ways were not her ways.

Scottish theologian Oswald Chambers argued that “God’s silences are His answers.”5 Silence from God, therefore, may be an overture of intimacy, not a retreat from it: “Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because He saw that you could stand a bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, praise Him, He is bringing you into the great run of His purposes.”6

From this view, God’s silence is not punishment or abandonment but an intimate gift of trust.

When All Is Quiet

So when God seems silent, what should we do?  To begin with, we could use the silence as an occasion to remember the ways he has spoken in the past. When you are separated from a loved one and cannot converse, it’s common to remember conversations or moments of intimacy from your previous times together.

Instead of wondering “where God went,” consider using the perceived “lull” in communication to remember those times. Remind yourself of the moments when you keenly felt his presence, the times you believe you heard his instruction, encouragement, or affirmation.  Let those memories fill the void and strengthen your faith.

As you remember, thank God for those times. Praise him, too, for his attributes, his character, his mighty acts of the past, and the ways he has been faithful to you. Let gratitude—not fear or doubt—begin to fill the emptiness you may be feeling. His character is not dependent upon your perception of him—something else for which to be thankful!

Understand that your faith is being exercised when God seems absent. During the silent times, you must trust something beyond your own feelings and emotions. “Anyone who comes to [God],” said the writer of Hebrews, “must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”7

Belief in times of silence is hard. When God is silent, we’re tempted to stop believing that he exists or that he cares. “What makes [unbelief] in many was more appealing [than belief] is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn’t require much of anything at all.”8 Take the hard road. Let your faith be strengthened as you believe without seeing or hearing.

It is also important to continue to obey God—especially during those times when his presence is not felt. Don’t fall into the trap of saying, “If you’re not going to talk to me, I’m not going to try to listen to you!” So much of God’s will and instruction is given to us not individually, but corporately. Within the pages of His Word, he has said much about how he wants his people to live.

He speaks through the Bible, through other people, through his created world, and through the “still, small voice” of his Spirit. Often what we imagine as silence from God is far from it. Obey what he has already said, and you will be poised to hear even more from him.

Remember. Praise. Obey. Repeat.

“I’ve done all these things,” you might say. “Doesn’t God owe me proof of his presence now? Doesn’t he have something just for me?” No. And yes.

No, he does not owe us proof that he is. (He gives us this in many ways, but it is not owed.) What we are due on the basis of our performance is, thankfully, not what he gives those of us who put our trust in Christ.

He offers grace to the person who confesses their shortcomings and asks for mercy. He gives himself to those who ask. Yes, he does have something just for you. If his voice is not clear, if his plan is not plain—keep doing the things you know. Keep remembering his goodness and love. Keep praising him. Keep obeying as much of his will as you know.

And as you focus on these things, keep the ear of your heart tuned God-ward.  You will hear his voice again. Until then, receive the silence. It teaches, too.

  1. The Holy Bible, New International Version © 2011, Numbers 23:19.
  2. Ibid., Isaiah 55:8.
  3. Ibid., 1 John 4:8.
  4. David Van Biema, “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith” Time, August 23, 2007.
  5. Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Deluxe Christian Classics) (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Publishing, 2000), 207.
  6. Ibid.
  7. The Holy Bible, Hebrews 11:6.
  8. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1992), 218.
  9. Photo Credit: Branislav Jovanović / Stocksy.com.
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The Choice To Believe

Three Iron Nails

“Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails… and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

[JOHN 20:25]

Thomas was the only disciple whose name became a synonym for a certain group of people. You don’t hear about “walking-on-water Peter’s” or “beloved John’s.” But everybody knows what it means to be a “doubting Thomas.” Thomas was the man who said “show me.” He needed to see for himself that the resurrected Christ was the real deal. Thomas saw Jesus die. He saw the blood and the flies. He smelled the stench of dying flesh and heard the Savior utter His last words. He was an eyewitness to it all, and then he disappeared.

On that first Easter, the rest of the disciples saw Him, but Thomas did not. They told him, but the picture of the crucifixion was still too fresh and real for…

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The Bible

How We Got the Bible

By:  Norton Herbst

© ExploreGod.com

The Bible is a very old and unusual book. Where did it come from? Discover answers here.

Millions of people around the globe put their faith in a collection of books called the Bible. They consider it to be the Word of God, endeavor to live by its standards, and fervently believe its stories. Indeed, even nonreligious people value the Bible’s accounts of ancient history and admire many of its moral teachings.

But how did we get the Bible? What are its origins? Who wrote and compiled its books? Did they have a hidden agenda? Perhaps they made up stories or covered up certain embarrassing facts as Dan Brown suggests in his novel The Da Vinci Code.1

These are important questions to consider. It’s hard to trust anything we read without first knowing where it came from; in fact, we shouldn’t just blindly trust anything.

In the case of the Bible, we should remember that it is not really one book, but a collection of sixty-six different books written by numerous authors. Let’s explore how these books originated and eventually formed the Bible we have today.

The Old Testament

Israel emerged as a solidified nation in the ancient Near East when the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt and settled in the Promised Land of Canaan. During the course of their history, from about 1200 to 400 BCE, the Israelites produced and collected certain writings that were of great significance to their identity and faith.

This literature includes historical documents that trace their origins as a people, the events their ancestors experienced, and how and why they understand themselves to have a unique relationship with the one true God. It also comprises the moral teachings and legal codes that governed Israel’s society, such as the Ten Commandments; poems, songs, and wisdom literature; and the recorded messages of prophets who guided and corrected the people.

Some of the original authors are known; some names have been lost to history. In all, twenty-four different books made up this collection of sacred Hebrew writings.

Before the time of Christ, this collection was translated from Hebrew into Greek—creating a version called the Septuagint—for the sake of Jews living outside Israel who were more familiar with the Greek language. In this way, they could remain linked to their Jewish identity.

By the time of Jesus’ ministry (about 28 CE), most Jews considered this written anthology to be authoritative for their faith. It came to be known as the Tanakh (also known as the Masoretic Text). Today it is also called the Hebrew Bible. Among Christians, it is known as the Old Testament.

Since this time, some of the books in the Old Testament have been ordered differently and divided into smaller books (hence most versions of the Hebrew Bible now consist of thirty-nine books instead of twenty-four). In spite of this, the content remains basically the same.

There were other Jewish books written during this time, some of which are collected into an anthology known as the Apocrypha. However, there is no evidence that either Jews or early Christians considered them especially sacred; therefore they were not included in the Hebrew Bible.

The New Testament

The writing of the books of the New Testament took place over the course of the first two hundred years of the Christian movement. Shortly after Jesus’ death (about 30 CE), writings that were authored by early followers of Jesus began to appear. These followers believed that Jesus was God’s son, sent from God to be Israel’s Messiah and Lord over the entire world.

The first writings to be collected were letters, many from a traveling Christian leader named Paul.2 Others were written by early disciples named James, Peter, and John. The letters included in the New Testament were written to various churches or individuals and often addressed specific problems these early Christians faced.

As the Christian movement grew and stories about Jesus were told and retold, some decided to document the events of Jesus’ life so that accurate chronicles would exist for posterity. Tradition records that Matthew and John—original disciples who were eyewitnesses to many of the events they describe—each wrote one of these gospel accounts (gospel means “good news”) of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Two other gospels—that of Mark and Luke—were written by men who had direct access to the early followers of Jesus. They did research to verify the truth of their accounts as best they could.3

Luke also wrote a second book, known as the book of Acts or the Acts of the Apostles. This work details the history of the early Christian movement—that is, what happened after Jesus’ death and resurrection. John also wrote a second book, the apocalyptic text known as Revelation.4 Together with Paul’s letters and the gospels, these writings were widely circulated and read by churches across the Roman Empire by the end of the first century CE.

Additional writings about Jesus and the Christian movement appeared in the centuries that followed. The legitimacy of some was dubious; others were more clearly reputable. As with the Hebrew Bible, there are some texts that have been collected within the Apocrypha but are not included in the general canon of the Bible.

Most Christians believed that the earlier writings were inspired by God in a distinctive and compelling way. These earlier texts were authored by those in the first generation of Jesus’ followers—those who had actually seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. They gained universal acceptance among the vast majority of Christian groups and were consistent with the general beliefs and practices recognized in the early churches. These qualities motivated church leaders to begin identifying a “New Testament” that fulfilled what had been written in the “Old Testament.”5

By the end of the second century CE, numerous books were universally accepted as biblical: the four Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); Acts; the thirteen letters attributed to Paul; 1 Peter; and 1 John. The books of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation faced a bit more scrutiny but were ultimately accepted as authoritative biblical texts.

In 367 CE, the respected church leader Athanasius published a universal list of the twenty-seven New Testament books. Together with the Old Testament, this canon forms the Bible we have today, which has been translated into numerous languages.

Controversy

It’s important to understand that the compilation of the Old and New Testaments was not hugely controversial in the ways some modern writers have alleged. There were no closed-door meetings of powerful Jews or Christians who voted certain books in or out based on political agendas. And contrary to Dan Brown’s entertaining novel The Da Vinci Code, Emperor Constantine did not control the outcome.

Rather, the Bible slowly emerged as a sacred book because people of faith found purpose and meaning in its writings. Recognizing its lasting value, they preserved its writings for the generations that followed.

  1. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
  2. See David B. Capes and Rodney Reeves, Rediscovering Paul: An Introduction to His World, Letters and Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
  3. For example, note the beginning of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:1–4): “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”
  4. “Apocalyptic” means simply that it deals with the end times.
  5. The word “testament” might be better translated from the Greek as “covenant.” Early Christians believed that the Hebrew Bible described God’s “old covenant” with Israel, while the new writings described the “new covenant” God had offered to all people through Jesus.
  6. Photo Credit: Stocksnapper / Shutterstock.com.
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