For Better or Worse, 'Til Death Do Us Part

I went to a wedding yesterday. Events like this always get me thinking and cause me to reflect. Few moments in life are as momentous as the wedding day and we should tremble in awe at the goodness of God in giving us such a truth-revealing experience as marriage. Wedding days are momentous, but marriage is even more momentous.

1. Despite the cultural assumption that marriage is primarily for happiness, for some people marriage is momentously terrible for their happiness. Certainly for those who have been through a divorce or sometimes wish they could there is no secret that marriage can greatly endanger your happiness.

2. Marriage is momentously humbling. In our most honest moments, loving a person through the seasons of life will most certainly cause us to recognize our own deep inadequacies and self-centeredness. The face-in-the-mirror experience of having to love another human being in such an intrusively intimate relational setting is .

3. Marriage is momentously transforming. Marrying Annie has distinctively determined the trajectory of my life in ways that marrying someone else or remaining single would have not. For me, marriage has brought into my life some things that I desired, some things that I did not desire but am thankful for, and some things that I did not desire and am not thankful for. The intertwining of two lives creates an indelibly unique combination and effects change in our lives as individuals like nothing else would. The transformation can be good or bad of course, which only makes marriage more momentous.

4. Marriage is momentously honest. In a popular culture that strokes our egos, tells us were all wonderful inside, and is wrecklessly committed t0 a belief in the inherent goodness of humanity, marriage stands as a weather-worn pillar of testimony to our need to be transformed by the Spirit of God to love another person with passion, selflessness, understanding, service, gentleness, respect, support, truth, and sacrifice.

For all the reasons above I love marriage and I love being married to Annie. I also find a deep joy in the reality of marriage that cannot be found in the fleeting promises of the shear delight of unmitigated Romanticism. Romance is good. Romanticism is mostly bad. Marriage is divine, momentously divine.