A Thought For The Week Of June 6, 2016

"With God’s power working in us, he can do much, much more than anything we can ask or think of." (Ephesians 3:20) I presided at a wedding this past Saturday. This verse (along with v.21) forms the basis of the typical benediction that I use at the end of a wedding service. Having said that, I must confess that I've never really given much thought to how this particular biblical benediction is related to marriage or to weddings. There's no doubt that they make a beautiful benediction that can be used for pretty much any occasion, but there's nothing that is really related directly to weddings. So why do I use it? What is it that at some point in my ministry made me link this benediction with marriage? God, of course, is constantly engaging in the work of creating and re-creating. According to the Bible, that's basically what God does - God creates and God re-creates. God created the universe, God created the world, God created life and God created us. God creates. God does something that we can't do. Certainly, we are creative beings. Surely that's a part of what it means to be created in the image of God. But we are merely creative. God actually creates. We use raw materials to create, but God brings forth from nothing. God created life where there was no life. Perhaps this is what the verse is referring to when it says that God "can do much, much more than anything we can ask or think of." And when we think of creating and re-creating, and of God bringing forth that which did not exist before, isn't that basically what marriage is? Marriage is like the creation of a new life. In marriage, two lives are joined together to create a new life; two people are joined together to be one, even though they remain distinctly two. Here is God's creative power at work. Marriage is the bringing forth of new life, just as surely as new life was brought forth in the creation story of Genesis. God creates. And God re-creates. We are all constantly being re-created; transformed day by day into what God desires us to be. Marriage is one part of that divine creative process at work. The mystical union of two lives to create one life is a reflection of God's ability to "do much, much more than anything we can ask or think of."