Sunday, June 03, 2007

Thoughts on the Wedding: More Hope

F. Scott Fitzgerald said,

Mostly, we authors repeat ourselves—that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives—experiences so great and so moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories—each time in a new disguise—maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.

“One Hundred False Starts,” Saturday Evening Post (4 March 1933).


I see my theme when I look at my journals and note the common thread in my writings. I noticed it again this weekend in Florida for my friends' wedding by what resonated most in my heart.

The groom's dad spoke at the rehearsal dinner on the wedding motif in the Bible. He compared weddings to the great wedding feast in heaven when the Son will take the church as his bride. He told me later that the Bible's description of weddings is in the context of this future wedding. Weddings now point to the great wedding in heaven.

Here is what captured my thoughts over the weekend and resonates with theme of hope and kingdom I find in all my writing: What does it mean to celebrate and point to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in a wedding? A marriage? How do I do that as a happily single man?

The wedding was by far the best I have attended or been involved in. Everyone was so genuinely happy for the couple that the entire weekend lacked the normal tension and frustration that accompanies weddings. That is a measure of the families' graciousness and the depth of the bride and groom's relationships. Most people don't have such good families or deep friendships. May their tribe increase, and may their marriage be a celebration and announcement of the great wedding to come.

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