Bread for the Journey ~ On Marriage

We've just seen another Valentines Day come and go...

and for some, it was just as they had hoped and for others there is a big sigh of relief that it's over for another year.

Before we tuck away the last of the pink napkins and eat up the last heart shaped sugar cookies...

I would like to share with you one of my favorite quotes on marriage and our responsibility in it.

At first glance Bonhoeffer's quote may seem like a set of values from another place in time but I find it has a message that is timeless and if applied is powerful to make our marriages noteworthy and inspirational.

 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, put into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II for his staunch resistance to Hitler and his genocidal persecution of the Jews. He was executed by hanging shortly before Germany surrendered in 1945. During his time in prison his niece was married and if he would have been able he would have taken her wedding ceremony.

His sermon was smuggled out of prison and read out loud at her wedding and I share a short portion with you here today to perhaps challenge your thinking on marriage and to encourage you to see your responsibility in your marriage in a new way.  If you are in the planning stages of your marriage I would encourage you to seek a godly marriage course that will get you off to the best possible start.

“Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.” 
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

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