... About Summertime and Weddings

Ah, summertime. It’s almost here for us in the mountains. A time when thoughts are on the lovely weather, baseball, the outdoors, where we are going on our family vacation, and sometimes how many weddings are packed into such a short time. One year, back when I was in my twenties, it seemed like we attended one every week for an entire summer (I must admit that we too married in the summertime as well). It’s a great time for weddings. The flowers are blooming; the weather (for the most part) cooperates; everything just looks beautiful for the pictures. Here's the catch: my only hope is that the beauty found in the outward nature of the photographs reflects the beauty of the commitment found within the marriage. Long after that beautiful wedding day is the commitment still there? When times get tough later on, do we stick to vows, or cast them aside like some no-longer-needed appliance?

I performed a wedding not long ago where I challenged the couple and everyone gathered there on that wonderful day. I said that it was really easy to see the commitment in a couple on a wedding day when, with everything so beautiful around them, and family members staring at them, that no one would question their commitment to marriage. It was somewhat risky for me at that point to share all of the work involved in keeping marriage alive, after all no one wants to hear about that when everything looks so beautiful on a wedding day! But the truth is that it is work. It is not drudgery, like going to a job that you intensely dislike, but it does take effort. Commitment to a marriage relationship takes everything that you have. That’s the way God intended it to be.

You see, we were created to be in relationship. The first thing God noticed about his creation was the “aloneness” of Adam. What’s the solution? Relationship. That’s why I love the verse in Genesis that ends the narrative on the first relationship. It goes: “So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24, NCV). This relationship is so close that it seems like they are together. All I’m saying is: that takes effort, and may God continue to bless your efforts at keeping your commitments into the autumns of lives long after those summertime wedding days.