The other day, a post arrived – I mean a snail mail properly stamped and all. Surprise of surprises,
It was a wedding invitation.
Honestly I thought these things were passé. This is the age of separation, divorces, club fathers and single mothers. The Family Court packs in more people than church weddings! The divorce rate has far outstripped the rate at which weddings are taking place, so much so that some long standing marriages are feeling threatened.
Back to the Invitation.
It followed the template – Bible verse (Eccl. 3:11 “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time“), parents honoured, grandparents mentioned, church wedding, followed by Reception; oh, you know the pattern all too well from times past.
I can just imagine the scene in the church: Canon in D by a string ensamble and the “Voice that breathed o’er Eden” belted out by a scratch choir. The bride and her father doing an adorable walk down the aisle having watched the movie “Father of the Bride” the night before.
Really very brave of the couple to take this step and enter into a covenental relationship as the pastors are never tired of reminding young people. But the fact is, increasingly it is not regarded with lasting seriousness.
For a while it is hunky dory. Honey Moon, house visits, smiling relatives, grand feasts et al. Then the business end of the marriage has to be handled – mother-in-law, late nights at office, official tours, stag parties……..
Only a few years from tying the knot or exchange of rings, and pledging one’s troth (what an arcane word!), the couple is ready for another major step in their journey. This time the intent is to decouple, the umbrella reason being irreconcilable differences !
This phase is managed rather quietly – understandably no bells and whistles, flowers and festoons. It is the parents who are hit hard; they rarely leave the house and if they step out at all, they try to fly under the radar.
But young people, they take it in their stride. When you meet singles whose weddings you attended, you learn not to ask uncomfortable questions. It is a definite no, no to enquire how the other person is doing. You just assume that they have fallen out; nine out of ten you would be right. It won’t do to put them in the spot, especially when children are around.
In an age when divorce follows wedding as surely as night follows day, you need to develop new social graces appropriate for the 21st century. Sure, some times you feel for the pastor who takes the trouble to work on a three point sermon complete with the customary reference to the wedding at Cana or St. Paul’s treatise on love found in 1 Corinthians 13 . It is a frustrating job to do when you know that the two young people you are marrying, who seem so devoted to each other, will before long go their separate ways.
Talking about wedding invitations, I wonder how they do it in America where people marry and divorce at the proverbial drop of a hat. Do you see a fine print at the bottom which says ” His first, her fifth” or something like that? What kind of sermon do ministers there deliver – social messages of exhortation?
Cognizant of the issue, there are many churches that have made it a practice to have premarital counseling for the couples to be married, but what about follow up after marriage? Me thinks, the same minister who waxes eloquent with the wedding sermon should be tasked with follow up counseling at regular intervals until the marriage stabilizes.
While the young go merrily about and the old rue the days gone by, it is the sandwhich generation that bears the brunt. Caught squarely in a cultural transition, it blinks. Whatever step it takes is bound to be wrong and denounced by age groups on either side.
And it wonders:
What of the Bible verse, what of the prayers, what of the elaborate sermon, what of the hymns, what of the blessings, what of the pledge, what of the love ?
Is it all some kind of Will-o’-the-wisp?
Wasn’t God in the equation at all? Were we merely going through the motions of a respectable wedding?
Did we all en masse misread the will of God in the matter?
Somebody answer them. Please.
________________________________
It’s sad but true house where God is not the center & the couple egocentric see that the marriage does fall flat like the house whose foundation is built on the sand .However It’s Gods plan to see couples live out their marriage as he wills to death do us part – for he hates divorce
True, but what if the marriage itself was a mistake and a misreading of God’s Will?
very Rightly said. Most Christian couple queue up at family courts for divorce than marriages.1 Corinthians chapter 13 is like blowing horn to the deaf man. Thanks brother Judah
Thank you, Stephen