Today and Everyday

Recently, Scott and I celebrated fourteen years of marriage. Well, the truth is, we didn't celebrate at all. We forgot it. Not on purpose, mind you, but we were out of town visiting some really important people and having such a wonderful time, we completely forgot to mark the occasion! No dinner at a fancy restaurant or romantic weekend getaway --not even a couple of mass-produced drugstore greeting cards. Just us together. Enrapt in the journey. Lost in the company of others we love. 

In Ephesians 5:22-33, God, through Paul, talks about what He expects from married couples. God is all about relationships, of course, but marriage is a special one: marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship with the Church (not necessarily the members of your local congregation and not the place where you meet, but all of those adopted into God's family). Christ calls the Church "His Bride." Wives are to respectfully submit to and serve their husband in the same way the Church submits to the will of Jesus. Husbands are to love their wife sacrificially, giving their all to lead her in the right way, to tenderly care for her and keep her chaste, to build her up and cherish her. The two are to become one in the same way a Christian becomes one with Christ. 

Marriage is an earthly expression of a heavenly covenant. And it's that "earthly" part that guarantees it will have its share of difficulties and imperfections. Worse than forgotten anniversaries, there are temptations and trials that attack our marriages from the world around us: unmarried friends who seem to have so much freedom, financial burdens, work that never seems to stay at work, even the joy of children can test the durability of the closest bonds. And there are those things that lie within both of a marriage's imperfect participants, selfish things that weary of "letting" the other have their way, tiny irritations that seem to grow exponentially as our personal anxieties take center stage. And, lest we forget, Satan mounts his attack. Oh, the satisfaction he must feel when yet another illustration of God's holy relationship with His people is dissolved formally and finally in the courts of his world! 

It's beyond sad. But marriage is meant to be greater than the smiles and dream vacations we post on social media. Marriage is strengthened in the three hundred sixty-five+ days of every year, the rainy Mondays, the mundane Tuesdays, the uphill Wednesdays, the ugly Thursdays, and unbearable Fridays. Marriage is a commitment to faithfully and humbly serve when all of those sweet, wonderful, so-easy-to-come-by feelings have retreated a little more deeply beneath the surface of time and self-righteousness. Marriage is taking the discovery and growth of morning devotions with a Savior who knows us better than we know ourselves, and treating another human being with the same desire to know and be known. Marriage is a promise not only to the one we faced on that special day last week or all those golden years ago, but it is a promise to God that, with His help, we will represent His relationship with His people as accurately and with as much honor as we are able; and it is a promise to all people that the Savior of the world loves them and desires a relationship with them, one in which they can grow and experience wholeness.

Our anniversary may have come and gone without either of us thinking back to the day we said, "I do," but marriage is about more than one day. Like being a part of the family of God, it is about becoming lost in the bond of doing life together. In retrospect, there was no better way to mark such a milestone.