Wedded Grace

When the back door of the sanctuary opens and she floats down the aisle under that veil of white, the groom grins giddy.

A son leans down the pew and whispers it too loud. “The guy looks like he’s going to split, he’s so happy.”

The groom smiles like he’s swallowed the canary through all three stanzas of the hymn they sing together. He beams deliriously when he tells us all from the platform, “I’m so grateful to the Lord that God let this day finally happen.”

It looks like his cheeks might hurt, his happiness through the vows: “After my complete commitment to the Lord, I promise you will be first in my life.”

The Farmer squeezes my hand. Murmurs it in my ear. “We should go home and recite our vows again too.”

I turn to catch his eye. “All over again. In a heartbeat.” He grins like he’s twenty, winks, and pulls me all into him.

And when the preacher says the groom can kiss his bride, he fumbles nervous with the hem of the veil, too anxious to get to her, and the guests all chuckle embarrassed and when he finally cups her face in his hands and revels unabashedly in her, I look away to the floor. This is all theirs.

Afterward, at the reception, there’s a little bottle of honey, liquid light in glass, on the plate of each guest. A son pats the Farmer’s arm and tells him they found honey, still good, in the pyramids. That honey always lasts.

That they’ve given us a token of forever.

On Sunday morning, we sit in the pews of our chapel, and the preacher’s preaching who we are in Christ.

“In Christ, you have immediate access to God and all of this is yours — joy, acceptance, completeness, rest, righteousness, access to the throne of God. You are sealed and He has pledged Himself to His people and you are His.”

And I look around and it strikes me — Why aren’t we all standing? Why aren’t we all grinning giddy? Why aren’t we all smiling like we just might split?

I keep reading the vows the preacher has on the screen, slow and captivated.

He’s given all these gifts to all His children, no matter where we are — why not slow and really revel in this because what love is greater than this?

Why don’t our cheeks hurt with the happiness of it all? What more could we want? How do we contain ourselves? Surely all the believers believe?

The vows of the Christ, they are covenant, and He lasts when we lose everything else and all the gifts are in Christ alone.

We could float.

On the way out of the chapel after service, I catch a glimpse of it through the stair door window, what’s hanging there in the stairwell.

I step into the empty quiet of the landing, just to the read the words again, quilted there on the wall hanging.

The stairway’s still. This is ours. Like honey, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones, all His covenant, a gift of forever.

When the Farmer asks me on the way home why I’m smiling, I squeeze his hand. Murmur something about how I just can’t stop, the promises that won’t let me go — all the light honey in the trees …

Lord God, today, make me giddy with gratitude for Your covenanted gifts — all joy, all acceptance, all completeness, all in Christ. Never let my heart grow so cold that I get over this. Wed me to worship and woo me to praise and wake me to the Word-God who deserves my all.