"If you never challenge them of course they would not, this quarter of an hour in the morning which Esther asks for is like the rudder of the day, don't forget, the testimony which you give with your own married life does more than a hundred  lectures on marriage!"
Daniel replied,  "I tell you that we have to remind ourselves many times that we are married, if it depended just on our feeling of love, our marriage would have been on the rocks long ago."
"And this in spite of the fact that we love each other," Esther interjected,   "l love him very much and I know he loves me."
"It is not in spite of the fact that you love each other,"  I said,   "it is because of this fact that you have to remind you selves that you are married."
"Is this idea, that marriage uphold love, general accepted in Europe and America?" Daniel inquired.
I am always a little afraid when Africa begin asking me these questions.
"Not at all,"  I said honestly.  "In Europe and America today the triangle is very torn apart, marriage and love are torn apart, love and sex are torn apart, and of course, sex and marriage."
"How do they tear love and marriage apart?"
"With the argument that  "love" justifies everything, with or without marriage you may have sex wherever you want, as long as you "love"him or her."
"And what is wrong with this thinking?"
"It is unrealistic, they do not see this world as it is, there is no such thing as unlimited freedom, just as a forest or bush fire became destructive, so does "free love" become inhuman, demonic, the Soviet union tried at one time to set love free in that country, the experiment ended in failure, marriage mean for love what the hearth mean for fire."
"But how can I explain this to my people?"
"There is only one way; through God love, God himself is love. this is why God son gave up his freedom and power, he humbled himself and accepted restraint and limitations, God became incarnate, love was made flesh."
"But that would mean that only the one who believe in the God incarnate can help people with their marriage problem."
In the deepest sense, yes because only he knows that God him self meets us in the one we love, unless we encounter God in our partner we fail our partner."
Daniel thought for a while.
"And how do they tear love and sex apart in the West?" 
"There are, of course many options, a certain trend of thinking pleads for sex with out love, these people would ridicule love as chit chat they would say, "sex is for fun not for love", for sex , love is repressive, sex is for the happiness of the moment, it is a pleasure only if practiced with out obligation and without regret," 
"But Daniel, my brother, I don't come to talk to your people as a westerner, I came as one who believe in the God incarnate."
"I know that, otherwise I would not have invited you," Daniel said warmly,   'But are you saying that this message would be still less popular in Europe and America today than it is in Africa."
"Precisely, whoever proclaims the message of the dynamic triangle is a lone voice in the wilderness, regardless of the culture."
"But is it a certain garden concept also present in the old testament? Esther asked,   "there is male dominance, there is divorce as a man right, there is polygamy and an emphasis on fertility."
"I  think it's a process, Esther, " I replied,    "I think that's as men and women heard the message of this verse a process was started which permeated the Israelites culture, the is how the "garden concept" is overcome, for example, when Jesus quotes this verse in the new testament, he uses it clearly against divorce and in favour of monogamy."
The telephone rang again, Daniel waved his hands to his wife with the gesture of an Arab sheik , "I will let my garden serve me," he joked.
Esther got up obediently and want to Daniel office, where the telephone was, she came back laughing and addressed me:
"This time is for you."
 
Before I could catch my self, I jumped up just as Daniel had done earlier, Daniel roared with laughter while I stood in embarrassment, realizing that I had acted against my own advice.
"You are excused, he said graciously,  "first of all, except for half of your dessert, you have finished the meal , second you have shown me that you are not a legalist."
I picked up the receiver.
"Is this Fatma?"
"Yes"
"Tell me, are you the one who called me already twice yesterday?"
"Yes I am the one."
"Then at least I now know your name."
"Is that important?"
"It is easier to pray for you."
"Do you pray for me?"
"Yes"
"Why do you do that?"
"It is the only way I can help you, humanly, I am at my wit's end, besides you asked me to do it once."
Silence.
"You were in church again tonight?"
"Yes."
"Did you hear that I used your idea of the tent in my lecture?"
"Yes I did, and l looked up the bible verse you give me, it certainly is the verse for me, my tent is destroyed and all my cords are broken, all of them, pastor after hearing your lecture tonight, I know that they are all broken, it is so true, what you said."
"What do you mean?"
"About contraceptive being a threat to love."
"Well, I was wondering all the time how you solved that problem."
"We haven't that is just it, he may think he has, but for me it is not solved, first he told me to watch the fertile days and count them on the calendar, but this didn't work and I became pregnant, he told me to abort my child."
"And you obeyed him?"
"Yes, of course, now he makes me swallow a pill every morning , but that means that after three weeks, I have a week of bleeding, and I have no pleasure, especially since I have been talking the pill, I feel almost numb."
"Many women who takes pills say this."
"Are contraceptives bad, pastor?"