Lately at weddings, I’ve noticed a current trend. Couples are writing their own wedding vows. Like these:
“I, Chris, take you Debbie, to be my beloved wife. I promise to love you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, when the Jets are winning and when they are losing.”
Lauren said, “I promise to love you, Phillip, forever and always from this day forward. I promise to learn how to cook your favourite meals and never criticize your mother. I promise to keep the house relatively clean, and give you full reign of the remote control.”
I guess there are good reasons we chose time-tried, well-worn vows when we were married. They weren’t suggestions or wishes, but sacred promises, vows to be kept for a lifetime, made before witnesses and before God.
In Matthew 19:5-6 (NIV), Jesus talked about marriage, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
We live in a day of instant downloads and easy refunds. For many marriage is like car shopping, “The Ford doesn’t run smoothly. I’ll trade it in on this improved Chevy.” Such thinking invites disaster. Marriage is a moment-by-moment commitment amid triumphs and trials to honour those vows. When she ceases looking as she does in that wedding dress. When he snores like a freight train and makes messes. To get back up and take the next right step, with God’s help, by God’s grace.
In real life, movie star Billy Crystal and his wife Janice have been married 53 years. Perhaps that’s why his words carried extra weight in one of his romantic movie roles:
“I love that you get cold when it’s seventy-one degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle in your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night.”
Beautiful.
And now that we have gone from finishing each other’s sandwiches to finishing each other’s sentences, we know it is the power of God’s love that has given us the strength to keep those sacred vows.
