Preparing for My Wedding Day

For many years, the Bible’s use of wedding and marriage-related imagery got under my skin. At the very least, it made me feel like an outsider. While I’ve never encountered anyone who actually thinks you have to be married to be saved, for many years I puzzled over why God would inspire the writers of the Bible to frequently reference an institution that, while familiar to all, is not experienced by all.

Recently, I realized something very fundamental, very simple, and rather revolutionary: I was looking at the entire thing upside-down. God’s relationship with us isn’t modeled after marriage. Those passages in the Bible weren’t just composed so we’d have something beautiful to read from Scripture at weddings. Our relationship with God is the ultimate union, and every other relationship is a shadow – or at best, a dim mirror – of that Reality. The language of marriage is used in Scripture because the earthly institution points to something bigger. It’s not, as I thought for so many years, the other way around.

I was finally able to put words to this particular thought process of mine after this week’s sermon on Philippians – in particular, the passage where Paul beautifully states that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Pastor Lawrence said that what we consider gain in our lives is when we see what we’ve been looking for, when our longed-for objective is complete; so if Christ is our aim in life, death is gain, because we finally with the One we lived for.

His language reminded me of what I have observed in the friends I’ve known who have gotten married in recent years. I thought of the hours of research just to get to the point of planning; I considered the preparations a bride makes in the months leading up to her wedding day, whether relating to flowers or the program for the ceremony or for the home to be established. The sacrifice of time and money, the all-consuming nature of wedding planning. And the bride doesn’t do this to earn the love of her intended: love has already been bestowed, freely, and in response she wants this day to be special, a celebration of this spontaneous love they share.

Watching wedding preparations through the lens Paul sets forth in Philippians, even dense, single Leeann starts to get it. If a bride puts so much preparation into her wedding day, how much more should believers devote their thoughts, their treasure, their heart to The Relationship? Compared to the amount of time I’ve spent fretting over whether I will have occasion to plan an earthly wedding, I have spent shameful little time preparing for the wedding day I know will come. It should be my joy to spend time adorning myself for my Beloved, not to earn His love, but to honor it. The way I spend time and money should all be coloured by that love. And if I trust God will complete the work He began in me, then I know that my quest for a gentle and quiet spirit – the kind He sees as beautiful – will not be in vain.

No, it’s not the same as the fun and flurry of thumbing through wedding magazines, choosing bridesmaid dresses or going for a pedicure. I don’t pretend it is. But it is far more important, and I need to actively resist the temptation to think that it’s not simply because I can’t see it right now.