THE WEDDING BLESSING

© Carlos Padilla, February 2014

Those of us who are husbands, or wives, and those who long for marriage, and those who were married, we all share one hope: that marriage is happy and full of true love, that is long lasting, for the rest of our lives, and that the loved person will be that prince charming, or the princess whom they once fell in love with. What we Christians would call to be blessed by God.

However, in society and even in the Church, we see many broken marriages, and the sad consequences that come with it, not only for the spouses, but for the children and for both families. This break up is one of the first strategies of the devil against humanity. The first marriage he managed to alter and separate from God's way was Adam and Eve's. The strategy was simple, and even today it gives the same fruits: to set the wife apart from the husband in the fact that she will listen to another one who offers the possibility of knowledge and not to have to respect the husband, nor God. The husband, blinded by the wife whom he is in love with, follows her until he loses his relationship with God. I'm not only referring to man and woman, but to man and woman and their own mind, and the consequences for their own soul.

But the strategy does not only remain as the destruction of the marriage, but it has the purpose of the destruction of humanity, of society and of the person. Once a marriage is broken, the children suffer and their lives become bitter, from which come depressions, lack of hope, addictions and crimes. Therefore the spouses also fall in the same problems, as well as in adultery and fornication, corruptions and other tragedies. This affects society directly. The husband, destroyed, may be a school teacher, a judge, a politician. The wife, destroyed, may be a surgeon, a lonely mother, a company director. As we can see, the consequence for humanity is devastating.

Obviously it is my purpose that those who read this, marry in the faith of Christ. It is also that those who didn't, do it now, that they seek God's blessing, because it is never too late and He, as a good Father, has open arms for those who love Him in Christ. There is no better way to be happy in marriage than to go God handed, than to return to His way, or to begin for the first time.

The families of the groom and the bride also long that they'll be happy and that it goes well for them in all things, in their lives together. If the bride and groom, or spouses wish God's blessing for their marriage, they will find it making a covenant with God.

Let us see then how a marriage begins, from the wedding until life as a couple under the blessing of God, and therefore understand how and where is the source of happiness and true love, and the guarantee of a life-long union.

THE MARRIAGE OF CANA

In the "Weddings of Cana" John 2, Yahshua converted water into wine. The ordinary wine and the good wine. If we understand that Jesus is the first one interested in marriages having His wedding blessing, we will see the light coming from this Biblical story, in which Jesus Himself is the main character in the midst of some weddings. Yahshua converts water into wine, but not into any wine, but in the best wine that the master of the feast had ever tested. Was Jesus Christ only interested in proving that He could make the best wine from water, as the rest of Creation, or is He showing us something deeper and spiritual?

Wine represents celebration, happiness, a fruit from the vine that we use to share with friends, with our loved ones, in celebrations and weddings. Highly appreciated and of healthy effects under a moderate consumption, for its antioxidants, it is a source of blessing. It is so much so that Jesus Himself encumbers it together with bread, as the symbol of His own Blood to celebrate Holy Supper. Wine therefore is a symbol of life, of God's love, of happiness, the blessing. But Jesus teaches us that He is the source of the Creation of the excellent, of the magnificent, of the best we can enjoy. We better go Christ handed in our lives and in our marriages! But let us continue to see all the things that a wedding carries, because the Lord wants to show us how deep a message of blessing we will receive from that story of the conversion of water into wine.

THE PREPARATION OF A WEDDING

From the day that the engagement is announced, not only the engaged bride and groom, but both families, start a season of much excitement to prepare the event of union, an event as relevant as important and that will change their lives for ever. This way, both families, of the groom and of the bride, begin to prepare a celebration in which all want to participate, enjoy and bless the bride and groom.

The preparation of a wedding turns the lives of the families of the bride and groom upside down and in a state of emergency. The women begin to enter in a state of abstraction in which they only think about the dress they will wear, the shoes, hair style, accessories, make up, etc. etc. The men of both families are carried by the wind storm that the women have started, and receive instructions about the protocol, the suits, the shirts, the waistcoats, the shoes, the ties or cravates, etc. etc.

Actually, to a greater or lesser extent, if they don't hire the services of a "wedding planner" they will not be following the latest fashion; yes, fashion, as it could not be in any other way it also impacts weddings. If you have not lived it, surely you have seen it in some of the films like "The Father of the Bride", or similar ones. Nothing of what one imagines is what has to be done. Of course the cost does not only double, it multiplies by ten –it does not matter if you will be able to pay for food the next month– if you have lived it you understand what I say.

The bride and groom have to organize the honey moon trip, the car or carriage that will take them, the place where the wedding will take place, the colour of the napkins... the design of the cake, the rings. And of course the dress of the Bride is the centre of attention, so she goes "adorned for her husband" Revelation 21:2; the groom's suit goes second, but it is just as hard to choose to fit in the protocol. Those who accompany them, like the best man and the maid of honour, other relatives of the bride and groom, the fathers and the mothers, also have their odyssey to fit into the protocol chosen by the bride and groom.

And finally, with the big task, not of weeks, but of months comes to the end, the wedding takes place in an instant of great emotion that remains immortalized in thousands of pictures and in the official video of the wedding that everybody will watch many times after.

I am sure that in times of Jesus, marriage also took much time and dedication to be prepared. We can read about the garments of the bride in Song of Songs of Solomon.

THE WEDDING IS A COVENANT. GOD IS A GOD OF COVENANTS

The marriage covenant. God is a God of covenants and the marriage that God blesses begins with a covenant with God between the spouses, in which they commit to love each other for life. The wedding rings have their origin in a covenant. The ring is round, it has no beginning and no end. This is a symbol of eternal love, God's love.

Therefore a wedding is a covenant, and God is a God of covenants. God made a covenant with Abraham, known as "God's friend". Made a covenant with Moses, to whom He gave the moral and religious Law. Made a covenant with David. Made a covenant with us in Salvation by faith in His Son Jesus Christ, and this Covenant is one of a wedding, the Wedding of the Lamb, Revelation 19:9. But if we read chapters 21 and 22 we find that the Bible ends with two chapters that talk about a wedding, the one of the Church with Jesus Christ; Read them! Because the Church is the wife of the King of the universe for eternity, and the weddings are to be celebrated, and we are all invited through the Gospel, no matter the time or the distance between God and us, nor the distance to find the husband or the wife, because marriage comes from God.

And even though many who have married in history –not only in Biblical history, but in the history of humanity– have had to go far, or have found their other half very far from home, and many have thought that they have had to wait much, this is no impediment, for this comes from Above. Therefore a wedding is very important, and it does not matter the distance or the time, because a wedding is a covenant for life, because God is a God of covenants.

Therefore I would say to the bride and groom: Your covenant is with God, and between you. His Spirit is your link that cannot be broken, as Ecclesiastes says in 4:12: ...A threefold cord is not quickly broken... If as well you become your best friends, sharing everything and praying together, the wind, or Spirit of God will carry you by the hand and you will always fly together. In the Greek of the New Testament or Covenant, the word "Pneuma" is the same for wind as for spirit, and as we have seen in history, many spouses have been taken far by the wind of God to find the other.

Continuing with travelling far and waiting to find bride, we remember Jacob who travelled far for Rachel and waited for her seven years, and from them Joseph who found wife in Egypt, far from his land, and saved his people. But the husband that calls my attention most, who has come from furthest and has waited the most for his wife is Yahshua, the Son of God, who came down to earth from the dimension of Heaven, from eternity, to find His wife, our soul, for which He had to give His life, and has gone to prepare His Kingdom and will return to fetch us for the marriage of the Lamb, for ever.

The husband gives his life for the wife, and the wife for the husband. And this way, the marriage is the first institution that God created when giving Adam, Eve; that was the first wedding. The last, that marriage of the Lamb in the last days, as the Bible prophesizes.

THE WEDDING BLESSING

The wedding blessing is a gift of God received by those marriages who ask God, who wish to live a life following the guide of the Father. That blessing is fruit of the covenant with God of which we have been talking, and without a doubt, those spouses that come to God, whether to marry, as during their lives, no doubt they receive it because they obey God in their hearts. The Bible is the story of marriage, the same of our marriage, the Genesis of marriage. Stories of life amongst spouses, about the relationship with children, how to bless them and how to treat them when they rebel; with parents and grandparents; how to deal with family economy; through health problems, how to deal with jealousy; how to find your best friend in your husband or wife;  how to pray together and talk about the Bible and of God always, and in Him seek the guidance of life as a couple, and all relationships and circumstances, and how to reconcile when the spouses have had a discussion and receive peace and blessing from God.

I think the Text in the Bible in Ephesians 5 and 6 is an excellent summary:

5: ...²¹Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. ²²Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. ²⁴Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. ²⁵Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; ²⁶That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, ²⁷That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. ²⁸So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. ²⁹For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: ³⁰For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. ³¹For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. ³²This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. ³³Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

6: ...¹Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. ²Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) ³That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. ⁴And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Marriage is formed of three people, not two. This is something that, if we don't see it through the Christian perspective, it cannot be understood. God is the link of unity, the Holy Spirit inhabiting in the spouses is the guarantee of the marriage blessing. The beginning of the relationship mixes three things: the attraction, falling in love, and the spirit and soul of the other which attracts us, his or her personality.  A mixture of physical feelings, rational and spiritual that cannot be explained. The entire person attracts us, the looks, the talking, the ideas, dreams and emotions, his life, his faith, etc. The continuity of needing the other for ever, comes from God. Therefore marriage is composed by God, the husband and the wife.

Finally there is a blessing that the spouses must receive, which is no other than the blessing of their parents. I remember the wedding of my firstborn son, my wife and I loved it when the pastor invited my wife and I to pray for our son and his wife, which we did with great happiness asking God to fill their hearts with that love that He only can provide and as a legacy of our love towards them. I also wanted to share how important it is for the fathers and mothers to dedicate some words of blessing, some funny story, how proud they feel about their children, their best wishes of happiness and the joy and approval that they wish to express in such a happy day, for coming to ask God for His blessing for their marriage.

FINAL BLESSING: A MARRIAGE FOR A WHOLE LIFE

I would like to finish returning to the weddings of Cana according to the Gospel of John Ch. 2 where there is a message to which I referred at the beginning, for those who are still bride and groom, or for those who have not yet given their marriage to God, as well as to remind those who are married in Christ: "Till now you have enjoyed the wine of your relationship, ...but from the day in which you marry, or you deliver to God as a marriage, you will enjoy the good wine, reserved for a marriage that has come to ask for the blessing of God, and therefore receive their miracle -like the one Jesus did converting water into the best wine- the wine of eternal love, God's love." So to those spouses who have put their trust in God and from Him await to receive the true and eternal love: May you be happy and may God bless you always!