Dr Paul Allen

wedding (Photo credit: lazy fri13th ) Weddings are big business today. As comedian Jim Gaffigan says, “Weddings are an important event where we spend a lot of money so the bride can pretend to be a princess and marry her prince and live happily ever after.” He isn’t far from the truth. The bride is taught that this is her day, her day to shine, the day to fulfill her dreams and fantasies. And in too many cases, even among Christians , Christ is shoved to the margins. Into the fray step Catherine Strode Parks and Linda Strode with their new book A Christ-Centered Wedding. They write, “ Marriage is one of God ’s good gifts. It is a blessing to all of creation, and it’s a beautiful picture of Christ’s relationship with the church. Before you can experience the joy of this gift, though, you need to get through the wedding, and the wedding planning . This can be either an uplifting, encouraging experience or a frustrating exercise in trying to please everyone and failing. Many time

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Author: Tim Callies   “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church ( Ephesians  5:31,32). As he comes to the end of his teaching on marriage, Paul springs a giant surprise. He says that marriage is a mystery, that there is a hidden meaning in it and that until now this meaning has been hidden. The surprise is that marriage is a type or a picture or a display. Marriage is meant to be a portrait of something else. To show this he goes to the Old Testament , to the very first marriage of the very first man and woman. Let me give you some context. The Mystery God had created Adam and then allowed Adam to live by himself for a time so he could come to this understanding that in all of creation there was not a helper that was suitable to him. All the animals God had created para

Weddings — especially this kind of wedding — are times when many of us lose ourselves in the fantasy of what a wedding and a marriage are really about.  The fantasy that just that one thing or event can finally make us happy, complete, fulfilled. Can make our life perfect. So we celebrate that. Beautifully. In all that beauty, however, we risk forgetting that the real beauty of a wedding is not the sparkle or the tulle. It has nothing to do with flowers or candle flickers. You can’t even see it in the most blushing of brides or the most breathless of grooms. The real beauty of a wedding is instead found in the truth that marriage is a sacrament, a means of channeling grace. And you can’t channel grace without bearing the brunt of sin. And few things reveal unholy sin quite like holy matrimony. With all our promises of eternal love and fidelity, we get plenty of hurt. Plenty of frustration. Plenty of annoyance. Plenty of mean words. Plenty of disappointment. Plenty of selfish