Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you. (Psalm 88:9, NIV)
It’s a wedding week for me.
Like several of our staff at Links Players, I am summoned from time to time to officiate a wedding or a funeral. I do these just often enough to find them deeply meaningful, capturing the glorious weight of God in the heart of our lives—and in our own hearts, too, you might say.
So I don’t take the conversations I have with young couples and grieving families lightly. I don’t repeat the words I’ve said before at other ceremonies. I write from scratch, on the basis of Scripture, of what I see and hear from the principals, and of how God guides my pen.
These past several weeks, the conversations have been with the young couple who will be married on Saturday, saying vows meant to last forever. I have told them that my job is not “proper Christian weddings,” but rather “proper Christian marriages.”
In our last session before we will see each other at the rehearsal, we talked of mutual respect, and the prospective bride’s comments wandered to a disturbing phenomenon of our time: spouses airing their dirty marital laundry on the channels of social media. What are they thinking?, the three of us agreed. It is the epitome of dishonor.
And yet it set us up for a most important discussion. Just where do you do when your marriage (or some other holy relationship in your life) is standing on hobbled legs, threatening to crash in an ugly heap? Because this does happen. Dark days come to happy lives. Three places, I told them, go three places:
– Go to the one who knows all. Our first call in time of need is to be made to Jesus. He has already done for us what no one else can do. Of course, he can respond in this troubled hour. He can open our hearts and our minds to the comfort and charge that will come from those we go to next.
– Go also to one who knows deeply. That is, call on an older, wiser friend, one who has lived long in the kind of relationship you are finding hard. What sustained them when endurance was demanding? You need to hear that it can be done, and how.
– And go as well to one who knows broadly. A pastor or Christian counselor has spent grueling hours with many different cases. They can tell you that you are not alone, that God has come to the aid of those as daunted as you are now. They can give you biblical, practical counsel.
—
Jeff Hopper
September 10, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.