There’s a party going on in our backyard. A wedding party to be exact. We had a wedding today. It was a Redemptive wedding – one where Christ was glorified and worshipped and two lives became as one. And there was a drag queen… but that’s a whole other story! Here are some of the reflections I shared with the couple and those gathered.
“Marriage does something to you. I’m not exactly sure how to explain it….but it changes things. And I’m not really talking about external things, the stuff that people can see…. It’s the change inside and it happens very slowly over time. When two people enter into this covenant of marriage – and I use that word “covenant” very deliberately – and especially when it is entered into with God as a participant, lives are altered, grace is bestowed, and people notice.
“You see, marriage is one of those means of grace that God uses like a furnace to form you into who he is creating you to be. This covenant that you share with one another is a beacon of light, proclaiming by symbol and action that peace is possible. Divisiveness is not our only recourse – it may be the hardest thing you ever do, but it may also be the most holy……
“….And I think that’s pretty much what God has mind for marriage. It shows the world a glimpse into God’s Kingdom. That is not say that there won’t be times of difficulty, discord, or pain – there certainly will – but when that happens you move together toward reconciliation. When you hurt each other, you choose to forgive. Surely this is a lesson that our world needs hear – and marriage is the prophetic lived-symbol of that learning.
“But let me be clear – to whatever extent that marriage is a testimony God’s reconciliation in the world, it remains such NOT because we chose it to be. As much as we enact our marriages, we are acted upon through them as well. God uses marriage to make us holy. I’m not sure how that sounds. Does that resonate with you? Or repulse you? Perhaps it just seems sort of odd? And, in fact, it is.
“It is quite odd indeed, to say that the God of the universe – the Alpha, Omega, beginning and end, the creator of all that we see – chooses to use an imperfect person in an imperfect relationship set in an imperfect world in order to make us more like him. And yet, I think it is true. If we are to be God’s ambassadors of reconciliation – bringing sight to the blind, release to the captive, food to the hungry, rest to the weary – then God has to change us. And even more basically, if we are to truly love our spouse in the way Leslie read in the scripture earlier we need help. We need God to enter into our messy, self-consumed lives and awaken us. If we are to be intimate and vulnerable with our spouse, we need God to remove those walls that separate us. You can’t do it alone. God uses marriage to do this transforming work.”
