With 100% chance of rain this morning and a few sprinkles while we were putting up the flowers up outside, it looked like it was going to be a wet ceremony. The prayer, "Thank you for disappointments that lead us to depend on You truly" was one that I thought about this morning when we were gathering at the house getting ready. The pitter patter of rain gave us all a chance to rise to the occasion and to be flexible. And then, prayers were answered and God gave us the gift of morning glory with the rain that stopped, the fog that held off and the sun that began peeking through the clouds.... Amazing grace indeed....
In many ways, the morning felt like a race morning with all of us running on little sleep and a lot of adrenaline pumping through us to get to the start line... And what a fabulous race it was with cheers all around at the finish line...
below is the message shared on the beach this glorious morning:
"Abby & Jens, I want to say what a
gift it is to be a part of this day of celebration with the two of you. It’s so
special to be here with all of the people you consider to be your home team.
And it fills my heart with such joy to get to stand with you to celebrate the
gift God is giving to each of you in the other.
Little did you know the adventure the next five
years would hold for you both and how you would experience the wonder and
wildness of life together.
Today is an extraordinary day indeed. And on this day, it is hard to imagine the beautiful,
life-altering, soul-shaping things ahead of you. This is just the beginning.
From this day on, you will cry together, laugh together, pray together,
wash dishes and move furniture together. You will learn and unlearn things,
make a home together, hurt each other’s feelings without meaning to, and
sometimes even on purpose. You will learn over time that the heart of marriage
is forgiveness. You will learn how much forgiveness the other requires, and
then you will also realize just how much forgiveness you yourself need.
Today is about the promise of the future and all the great moments of
the past and, indeed, this beautiful present where you stand together,
surrounded by people who love you and who are praying that your marriage is one
of the great ones. It can be-- if you work hard and forgive often, and get over
yourself and your selfishness over and over again. It can be one of the stories
people tell, when they want to believe in love’s power and life’s richness.
Abby, when I asked you to share what you
love about Jens, you said
“I love Jens for the way that he is patient and always
listens- to me and the world- with all that he has, with openness, and with
grace. He believes the best in people, and aspires to always act with love and
kindness and to give the best to people- to me, to the kids he served in Americorps
to his friends and to his medical staff. I love Jens because he believes
there's good in me and there's something worth learning from me as we learn and
grow together. He makes every day fun, and I am so thankful I get to call him
my best friend and to spend forever together.
Jens, when I
asked you what you love about Abby, you said:
“I love that she hasn't given up on
me. Clearly, I come with plenty of obstacles, but she has stuck with me. I love her kindness towards people and
her devotion to each of her students. ...the way she laughs at her own jokes
(even if I'm not) or when she can't contain her laughter to the point it turns
to tears....when she lets go and just acts silly....that she likes to learn or try new
things-she's usually up for a new adventure...that she enjoys sports, at least
enough to deal with me. She makes things fun and keeps me going on tough days.”
You love each other. And you are each so
very grateful to discover in the other someone who longs to live into the Story
centered around God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving-Up, Unbreaking, Always and
Forever Love.
That is where this extraordinary passage of Scripture you’ve chosen for
your marriage begins and ends, with the extravagant and amazing
love of God.
As those God
chooses and sets apart as beloved, clothe yourselves with his compassion,
kindness, patience. Bear with one
another. Forgive each other as the Lord forgives
you. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything
together in perfect harmony.
The day of your
wedding is a fitting day to speak of putting on new attire—of starting fresh,
of clothing yourselves every day with the qualities that make marriage lasting
and beautiful.
There are a
couple truths from this Scripture I want to hold up today,
1.
It’s Jesus who reveals to us what love truly is. If we’re
to see the clothing we were created to wear, the life that fits us well, we’re
meant to look to Him
2.
When we put on the love of Christ, we become part of what
God is doing to redress the world (part of the whole new tapestry he is
stitching across the earth)
We must recognize that we’re living in a
world where there’s so much shallowness that masquerades as love.
Love is portrayed as a mere feeling. An
emotion. A gushy romantic sentimentality. It’s so often conditional - on youth,
attractiveness, money, health, convenience, success.
It lasts until feelings fade and things
get hard. Until disappointment comes.
But, God’s affirmation in Colossians is
that conditional notions of love are not the clothing of love at all. That
they’re only costumes pretending to be the real thing.
Rather, if we’re to know what real love
looks like—if we’re to know how to clothe ourselves with love—we look to Jesus–
to how he lived for us.
And Jesus…
--befriended outcasts
--touched lepers
--washed feet
--cried with those who were grieving
--celebrated w/ those who were
celebrating
--spoke truth in love
--forgave & forgave & forgave
until…
--his body was broken/his blood poured
out
--came back to forgive even those who had
driven nails
This is what the love of God looks like. Compassionate. Patient. Kind. Self-sacrificial. Unconditional. Unto
death.
Not merely a feeling, but a forever
promise. Fitting clothing. Costly clothing. The very stuff we were made for!
So when we clothe ourselves with Christ
for one another, we make real love known to the world and transformation
is manifest.
Caterpillars have to die to themselves in
order to put on the spectacular colors of the butterfly. It turns out that even
before this transformation from death to new life, even as caterpillars, they have butterfly parts within them. They have
wings waiting to happen.
And we, too are made for transformation from self-seeking to self-giving. We were meant to wear the spectacular clothing
of Christ from the beginning. We were meant to fly. But to wear those colors,
to truly fly, means dying to ourselves.
And if anyone understands this deeper
picture of love, it’s you two. The way you’ve given to each other in the last 5
years has been remarkable and is one that has inspired me to try breathe
through a straw while running to try to understand what CF was like (I don’t
recommend it) and you’ve inspired me to run – not one but two marathons in your
honor. You did not know what you
were saying yes to when you went on your first date, but God had in store for
you much change, growth, discovery, and transformation, and He kept expanding
your vision of what was possible.
Through it all, He helped you to face the challenges at every step as
you learned to breathe again. The sacrifice,
the risk, the stepping out in faith, the stamina and strength through the
journey of the transplant is something that has made your foundation incredibly
strong. You two have an anchor that has holds.
Christian relationships are meant to be a
parable of God’s love to the world.
And when we love each other with the surprising love of Christ, with his dying
to self, with his commitment through adversity, then people come to experience
in us a taste of hope that God is truly alive, that they can forgive and
endure, too. And the kingdom of God grows.
And that is what your story has shown to
me and to all of us here…
The love of Christian marriage is the
love of Christ’s self-sacrifice. His costly forgiveness. A life of giving of
Himself over and over and over.
Your marriage will be a covenant, a
sacred promise grounded in the love of God. Marriage is the avenue God teaches us to learn to
love….
It will endure in joy & sorrow,
sickness & health, plenty & want…
There will be times
--when you just wish he could read your
mind
--when you just wish she could see how
right you really are
--when you discover together again and
again that what’s obvious to you, is obvious only to you
But in all the times when you’d like to
throw in the towel, you have a choice to be the light and love of Christ to the
other, to be bread and wine for the other…. To offer a life poured out over and
over for the other….
You will find there is great joy in
choosing to cheer your spouse on to risk becoming all that the Lord intends
In making a Christian marriage covenant,
you’re promising something as huge as the heart of God: to love and forgive as the Lord loves and forgives you.
Then people will see your marriage as a
reflection of something far larger than you.
Marriage is a path that teaches us to
love ourselves and love someone else better … especially when it is most
difficult to do. When we extend grace to ourselves and to our partner, we
seek to understand instead of condemn and we learn to love. God’s shaping of our character is made manifest in
this open hearted, courageous, vulnerable daily practice of love.
I believe in the way God
knits two people together like this as you are standing before Him today on
your wedding day. Something sacred
is happening in this moment, something that will, with grace and intention and
faith and hard work, build upon itself and grow in power and beauty and
durability with each passing year.
It is our prayer that your marriage would
be centered on Christ so that you might be dressed in his love for one another,
that you would practice a costly life of forgiveness that requires you to die
to yourself over and over again on behalf of taking flight with new beginnings,
and that as you wear the clothing of Christ, your marriage might bear witness
to God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love
for which our world is desperate!
Bless you both as you walk together loving forth
the image of God in each other.
Make your love story one worth telling. Make it one worth living, every
day, as long as you both shall live."
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