"Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!"         Revelation 19:9

Obviously this is intended to have us use the metaphor of marriage to get some sense of what the union of God's children and Jesus, the Lamb of God, will be like.  I wonder if any of us are able to think about this without thinking of the joy of sexual union in the love relationship between husband and wife, one of God's great ideas!  I like weddings because they help me keep the dream alive - that there really is such a thing as the kind of union that stirs the deepest good passions in the participants and whets their desire for the ultimate thrill of union with Christ in heaven.

We are made for union and we feel it when we are disconnected.  The best times in one's marriage are just that - the best times. They are not all the time.

If you were going to write some fine print at the bottom of the marriage covenant, what would you write?  Fine print sometimes seems intended to hide something - like, "I hope you don't read this - you might change your mind!"

What "secrets" would you hide in the fine print of the marriage covenant?  I might hide something like, Sometimes you are going to hate this person and wonder why you ever married him or her.  Sometimes you will wonder why he/she married you, and you will be convinced he/she would be better off without you.  There may be a time when you know there's no way this relationship can really work because of him/her.  There may be a time when you know there's no way this relationship can really work because of you.  Sometimes you may have a death wish - for your partner.  Sometimes you may have a death wish - for yourself.  Here's what you can do when there is nothing to hold you together:  think : if I loved God and valued this person more than anything, what would I do, right now?  And then, however small and unromantic it is,  sacrifice your life and do it.  Do it again.  And again.  And again . . . you will become a true lover.

How unexciting, unromantic, and simple.  But it is still true that real love has nothing to do with feelings of attraction. It has everything to do with treating the other as the valuable persons they are, even when that value is covered over with something brown.

I suppose the reason we rarely read fine print is because it seems irrelevant, not necessary to know at the time.  And maybe it isn't necessary to know, right away.  Jesus  doesn't let us in on all that may be involved in our journey with him.  He did say it is the way of abundant life and will lead to joy . . . and that it will cost us our lives.  Apparently we don't need to know the fine print.  There will be a time, sometime in the marriage journey (as in our spiritual journey) when we will want to look at the small print (the Word?) to see if this really is part of the deal. And we will see things we hadn't seen before.  And we get to choose the way to Life all over again.  And, yes, of course, we can always choose death if we want it.

"Lover of My Soul, if your love for me depends on my attractiveness, I'm in deep trouble.  Thanks for seeing through my brown stuff to my value and giving your Life for me, as well as for all those other people I see around me.  Help me to see my spouse as you do, and love just a little more like You do.  And help me to wait patiently for that time of being joined to you, forever.  I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Amen"