Revelation 21:1-4
Aren’t weddings great?
I’ve never been to a wedding where people don’t wander around smiling. Sometimes they smile so much that by the end of the day it hurts to lift the corners of your mouth.
The joy of the day just overflows to everyone involved. All who are there are filled with joy and happiness. Its one of those exciting days that sticks in our memories forever. The perfection of the day remains no matter what happens later.
I can remember thinking that my wedding day would never arrive. I can remember Kris thinking the same thing. Even the night before at our rehearsal we were making jokes about it not happening because God would intervene to close out history.
That morning was filled with anticipation. I knew that by that evening my life would be drastically changed for the better.
When we stand in front of God at the altar, none of us realizes everything that is in front of us. The commitment to stay with each other in sickness and health, for better or worse, till death do us part is only a bunch of words, that don’t yet mean anything to us. They aren’t really real yet.
None of us sees into the future the nights we would spend staying up with each other when we or the kids are sick. None of us sees the financial struggles we will face over the years. We don’t see the many kinds of pain that life brings and all the tears we will shed because of it.
And even right now, we can’t see what tomorrow will bring. It could be joy. It could be sorrow. But we land right in the middle of this passage that says that God sees it all and will wipe away every tear and sorrow from His beloved Bride. That is a promise to those of us who have heard Him call and followed Him with our whole lives.
It is hard for any couple standing at the altar to realize the gravity of that commitment in the joy of the moment. The wedding day is such a perfect day for the couple that bad news usually only creeps in when the couple’s friends play practical jokes on them.
When we stand at the altar to get married, ,we aren’t thinking about the bills to be paid. We don’t think about the car needing to get fixed. We’re aren’t worried about to fix for dinner or about our next doctor’s appointment. It is hard not to think that the happiness we are feeling is not all there is to married life.
In the same way, it is hard for us to imagine that what we experience in life is all that there is to experience. We think this is it and we forget that life is more than what experience every day.
We work so hard to survive, to make ends meet because nothing it seems comes easy in this life. Then we see the news every night on TV or in the mornings in our papers and we’re left with the impression that this world is tough place to live. People do nasty things to each other. We struggle against nature, floods, storms, forest fires, drought, famine, too much food in one place and not enough in others.
Then there’s our own lives. We are never ready for the doctor to say, “I’m sorry.” Sickness and disease devastate us and rob us of the joy of living. They steal our joy and hope for the future and make us afraid of what tomorrow might bring our way.
But this life isn’t all that there is to life. (more…)
History, Mystery, Liturgy 