There is a question that everyone asks at some point in life. It’s this: “How did this happen?”

You might ask this question when you see a marriage that was strong…shatter. You might ask this question when you see a family fall a part, or when you see a church split. Often in the aftermath of deep loss and tragic fractures we ask “How did this happen?” Things looked to be going well and all of a sudden there was a divorce, a break, a fracture, or a split.

This is the question we’ll be looking at on Sunday. How do these things happen? How do relationships fall a part? Why do churches falter and fail? Why do some marriages that seem healthy end in so much hurt?

And most importantly, while we’ll be talking about how these things happen, we want to ask a second question. We want to ask an even more important question, “How do we keep these things from happening”. So on Sunday we’ll discover what Jesus has to say about this.

But before we get there what do you think? How do you keep a relationship whole? How do you keep a relationship fresh? How do you ensure that difficulties don’t turn into fractures and breaks? What is it that you do with in your marriage and friendships to prevent decay and difficulty?

Because I think the reality is that making relationships work is harder than we often think. It’s easy for things to slip and break. But on Sunday we’ll discover how keeping things together has a lot to do with staying awake…