CP 229 Of marriage and love...

CP 229 Of marriage and love…

Over the years I’ve collected lots of little snippets about marriage which get used as discussion starters when couples come to talk about wedding plans. Over the summer I’ll share them with you and so save myself from undue stress during the silly season. Each snippet comes under a general heading of ‘Thinking about marriage’. Today’s item was penned by an American Pastor named William Willimon. The old song reckons, “Love and marriage… go together like a horse and carriage…” Pastor  Willimon sees it rather in reverse. Read on… (The italics are mine.)

THINKING ABOUT MARRIAGE

Marriage and love

“One of the things that most of us learn in marriage is that love – real, deep, abiding love – is the result of marriage rather than its cause. Strange but true. A couple standing before God and the church at their wedding, may think that love is the reason for their wedding. They are here, in the church, having a wedding, because they are in love.

But one of the wonders of marriage is that, in making and keeping the promise to love one another – for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part – your love deepens, you become more in love than you were when you began keeping the promises of marriage. You’ve heard married couples note this when they say, “We didn’t know a thing about real love when we got married. We were young and silly.  But over the years, we’ve learned what real love is.” Through the thick and the thin of marriage, in the struggle to be faithful, love has been the gift of their fidelity. Thus the church, at a wedding, does not ask, “John, do you love Susan?” but rather, “John, will you love Susan,” speaking of love in the future tense. 

One thing that most of us discover in marriage is that the more you work at keeping the promises, the more faithfully you hold to what you promised to do, the less you have to consciously keep those promises. Fidelity just becomes part of you. You become a faithful person through your faithfulness. And thus Jesus speaks of love.                        (From William Willimon, Pulpit Resource May 1, 2005.)