Weddings

I went to a wedding yesterday. I had to I was the minster leading the service and the person signing the new Marriage Schedule as ii’s now called. Gone are the days of multiple books and registers where everyone had to sign four times. Now it’s one Marriage Schedule and everyone signs once! And it’s better than that for me because now I don’t have to fill out all the books and certificates either. The Marriage Schedule is printed by the Registry Office so all I have to do is sign like everyone else. Well almost, but I have to do a lot less than I once did. Anyway, even though I had to be there, it was a lovely day. What was really lovely was to see two people who had waited until they could have their wedding they way they wanted it, so this was the third date they’d set for it (July 2020, April 2021 and then yesterday). To watch them finally get to the day they were to be married was lovely. Really lovely. I do love to see people get married. It is God’s best way. Having been dad and minister at Meg and Justin’s wedding just over a year ago, I think I felt even more the emotion that is found at a wedding. But a thought strikes me: why is it that we wait until something like a wedding to tell people what we think of them? The other place we do this, strangely, is at funerals! In wedding speeches and in a funeral eulogy we say how great someone is, or was. There’s absolutely wrong with that, except that we wait until these moments to say what is in front of us all the time. Maybe some of us do tell those we love what we really think of them at other times. But I can’t thinking, when I hear speeches at weddings that I hope you say that often! And after a eulogy at a funeral I find myself thinking: I hope they said all those tings while the person lived. What I most love about weddings though is the bit where the bride walks down the aisle on the arm of her father looking radiant and being watched by the groom. His face as he watches her approaching the front of the church is filled with joy. It is, it turns out, one of the best pictures in understanding the part of the blessing we sometimes read from Numbers 6: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you…” When the Lord makes his face to shine upon us that’s what is happening: God himself has turned his face to watch his beloved. His heart is filled with great, great joy as he watches one of his children the way the groom’s heart is when he sees his approaching bride. It is a wonderful picture to hold: that God would shine his face upon us. Upon you. And that’s what he does: he looks at us, at you, with a heart filled with great, great joy. It’s a wonderful thing to pray for someone: to ask that God would shine his face upon them and look upon them in his great love. It’s not surprising really that the picture is from a wedding, since a wedding itself reflects the great and magnificent love of God. So, whenever I go to a wedding I am remined that God longs to shine his face upon me and that he looks upon me with great, great joy. May the Lod make his face to shine upon you. Yes you!