Pursuing Love

Andy and I went to Morehead City this weekend for his brother’s wedding.  On the way home, I told Andy it was one of those weddings that should have been featured in Southern Living Weddings.  They got married outside at a charming venue called The Boathouse.  It was simple and elegant.  The guests sat on unadorned white chairs and Ryan and Kristen stood under a plain arbor decorated with a white sheath and hydrangeas while they said their vows to each other and the minister read, “Love is patient.  Love is kind.”  They were flanked on either side by bridesmaids in sea green carrying baby pink flowers and groomsmen wearing light tan suits and bright pink ties with tiny white dots.  The ocean lapped against the shore and the sun was shining.  There was a light breeze.  Beautiful was an understatement.

 

I watched Kristen and Ryan say their vows, and their love for one another was abundantly obvious.  This is the third brother’s wedding I’ve attended since January, so I’ve been thinking a great deal about love and marriage this year.  I’ve seen gorgeous brides and fabulous weddings, and the exchange of vows is always my absolute favorite part of the service.  Ryan and Kristen’s vows were slightly different from the traditional vows, and one of my favorite lines was “I will love you as well when we are together as I will when we are apart.”  They said the lines so easily.  The words slipping off their tongues, their eyes shining with absolute adoration.  I said similar words almost a year ago.  It still amazes me, though, how humans are able to enter into these contracts.  These serious, lifelong commitments.  How they are able to make and keep big huge promises like, “Till death do we part” and “In sickness and health” and “As well when we are together as when we are apart.”  It feels mystical and magical and audaciously hopeful.  And I love it. 

 

I watch a wedding, and I get a glimpse of God.  I think of Hosea when the Lord says about the redemption of his people to himself, “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My husband’….And I will betroth you to me forever.  I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.  I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.  And you shall know the Lord.”  You know what is amazing about God’s words in those verses?  In the time he gave them to Hosea to deliver to Israel, the country could not have been more godless.  In fact, they had begun to use the name of the Lord synonymously with the name of a false god, “Baal.”  They epitomized unfaithfulness, and at their lowest, most miserable point, God pursed them and wanted to be called their husband.  The commitments are his.  The promises are his.  Israel was promising nothing, giving nothing, sacrificing nothing.

 

Over the centuries, God never stopped.  Like an eternally faithful, loving, merciful husband, his promises stayed good.  And those of his people were continuously inadequate and even nonexistent.    Our sin was so great that eventually he gave his son Jesus in the ultimate sacrifice of love, and Ephesians describes the relationship of marriage between a man and a woman like that of Jesus and his church.  Ephesians 5:22-24 says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband in the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”  Marriage should be a picture of the way God has loved his people.  Husbands should pursue and adore and fight for their wives the way God pursued and adored and fought for Israel.  They should shower mercy and forgiveness and faithfulness because of the vows they made on their wedding day regardless of their wives responses.  A lot of women have trouble with these verses on submission, but I honestly think they are harder for men.  All wives are called to do is to follow a lead – to help and encourage and trust.  Men are called to look like Christ.  If you ask me, that is a much harder, higher calling.  I think the difficulty of the calling to make the covenant of marriage look like God’s perusal of his church is why 1 Peter 3 follows the verses about Christian marriage with these: “Finally all of you, be like minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.  Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.  On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called” (1 Peter 3:8-9).

 

I’ve been married just under a year, and I can already see that loving like Christ is impossible.  In his book, Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas said that marriage forced him to confront his absolute selfishness and sinfulness.  He is entirely right.  Every day, I fail to love Andy perfectly.  More often than I’d like to admit I find I am demanding my own way or nagging him about something or failing to build him up in love.  But in my defense, I know he struggles with the same things when it comes to loving me.  We are completely imperfect people, and we will never be the type of love for one another that God is for us.  But you know what we can get right?  That part about faithfulness and showing mercy and offering forgiveness.  That part about not repaying evil for evil, showing sympathy, love, tenderness.  Sometimes we can get that right.

 

Above all, faithfulness is valued in the wedding covenant.  Keeping the vows is not always easy, but God calls us to push forward and keep going in spite of struggles and imperfections and mistakes.  Malachi 2:15-16 says, “God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose – so they would have children who are true to God.  So be careful, and do not break your promise to the wife you married when you were young.  The Lord God of Israel says, ‘I hate divorce.  And I hate people who do cruel things as easily as they put on clothes.’”  Why does God hate divorce?  Because he had a million chances to divorce us.  As his people, we have never been faithful.  In fact, we have flaunted our unfaithfulness and our sin, and yet he has never given up on us.  He has never stopped chasing us or pursuing us or loving us.

 

I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by couples who truly love one another and make marriage look easy, but recently, I’ve been more blessed to have friends in my life who have shown me what it looks like to love when marriage is hard.  Friends who have shown love and grace and mercy and forgiveness to their husbands in situations that many women would have used as grounds for divorce.  And those marriages are the ones that have shown me the beauty of Christ’s love.  The refusal to give up or get out.  The persistence to find love and solace in their husbands even when it isn’t easy and both partners are making mistakes.  Those couples remind me that God is good and that in his power we can do anything – like love in sickness and in health, till death do we part, and as well together as when we are apart.