Royal Wedding Highlight

As suggested by Rev'd Rico Tice of Christianity Explored fame at Bible by the Beach:

I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed....

I agree. A real spine shiver moment!

Marriage Preparation 2

Some jottings from my interupted half-listening to session 2 of The Marriage Preparation Course DVD (by the Lees and Alpha / Holy Trinity, Brompton, people).

Commitment is more important than compatability.

Unmarried couples are roughly 5 times more likely to break up in the first 5 years of a baby’s life than married couples.

Married couples tend to be healthier, richer, happier and have better sex lives than the unmarried.

Marriage is for friendship and family life.

Cf. infatuation (a feeling) and love (involving a decision and actions).

Commitment required for trust which is required for intimacy and vulnerability.

Make a point of having special dedicated time together / have fun together – a regular “date” / change of routine / avoiding distractions / effective communication (but not about routine / practical matters).

Think about daily, weekly, annual time together.

What are good times for you? E.g. morning or evening people.

Stay connected with one another (e.g. email, text) – what are the best ways to you?

Begin and end the day together if possible.

Pray for one another each day. A good way of sharing what’s on your mind too.

Marriage brings a change of loyalties and a different way of relating to our parents and wider family.

“Leaving” parents is required, while continuing to honour them.

Essential to put husband or wife above parents and make our own decisions about things (e.g. how we decorate our house, how we spend our money, holidays), possibly differently from our parents.

Support one another – don’t have childish states of dependence on parents (e.g. especially if visiting them in the old family home).

Resist manipulation from parents.

Aim for mutually supportive relationships with parents.

Say thank you to parents. Show gratitude. Almost all parents will have made sacrifices for their children.

Keep in touch with parents. Take the initiative (at least sometimes).

How often will you call, visit, stay with or invite parents (or other family) to stay, holiday with them?

What space do you need?

Do you feel threatened or overwhelmed by one another’s family?

What will you do at Christmas time? E.g. taking it in turn to host / visit parents.

Arranging the wedding and the wedding day itself could be stressful.

Not worth falling out over the wedding – what could you compromise on?

Your parents may be financially involved – they will almost certainly be emotionally involved.

Make sure you only ever say “you’re just like your mother (or father)!” as a compliment.

Plan time together and allow time apart / space. Some people can feel smothered.

Marriage Preparation 1

I find myself with the opportunity to prepare several couples for marriage this year. In preparation for this I'm listening to The Marriage Preparation Course by the Lees, the Alpha / Holy Trinity, Brompton people. One of the couples I am marrying has just done the course and speaks very highly of it.

Here are my jottings from the first session:

Strong marriages don’t necessarily develop automatically.

Good commitment, understanding, skills, habits, patterns are necessary to a strong life-long marriage.

Invest in your marriage, make it a priority. Be dedicated to it. Take a positive long-term view.

See every argument as smaller than the marriage.

What are your expectations of marriage?

How are we influenced by our own backgrounds and upbringing?

E.g. What would you expect to spend on a family birthday present?

E.g. when would we fill up the car, who would do it

E.g. Cling film and kitchen roll or a plastic box and a cloth?

Our assumptions might not be shared!

The average wedding takes 250 hours to organise.

40% of 1^st time marriages in the UK end in divorce.

Communication

2 parts: Talking effectively & listening effectively.

We all communicate differently.

We’ll be influenced by our personality, background and circumstances.

Extroverts tend to think our loud, talk through ideas.

Introverts may have decided before they suggest something!

How logical (think things through) or intuitive (work on hunches) are you?

How quickly do we think, react, speak?

How much conviction or passion would you speak with? How passionate / committed would you really be?

How easily / quickly do you change your mind?

Do you want to think things through on your own or discuss together?

Do you like to just talk or do things together?

How spontaneous are you or how much do you like to plan things (how far in advance)?

How much would you air your differences?

How acceptable is it to interrupt? Is an interruption rude or is it a sign of interest? Is it polite or boring not to interrupt?

How load or quiet are you?

How gentle, placid, relaxed or passionate, excitable / agitated and fired-up would you be?

E.g. what would your family be like over a meal? What sort of talk would there be?

What are your patterns of work (e.g. shifts, overtime, travel) etc.?

Do stressful things dominate? How much do you talk about them or try to put them to one side from time to time?

Stresses: E.g. moving house, changing jobs, tiredness, busyness, unemployment, miscarriage, infertility, illness, bereavement, financial worries.

Do you know what your partner is really thinking?

Do you tend to hide or go on the attack? Would you be heated or withdrawn?

What are the barriers to effective communication?

(1) Insufficient time.

Time that works and is good for both of you probably needs to be planned.

(2) Failing to talk about our feelings i.e. only discussing practical or superficial matters.

Understand and express feelings, emotional openness, reveal yourself / all parts of your lif.e

Can you ask each other helpful questions?

Fear of rejection, vulnerability.

Dare to reveal yourself.

Trust, acceptance – don’t judge or criticise / justify yourself.

When is a good time to talk and when is a good time to avoid?

E.g. ? bad times: bedtime, as going to sleep – raising a big issue; when driving / navigating.

Nice to focus on one another when getting home from work or over a meal.

Don’t carry over grudges to the next day – start and end each day in love and without ill-feeling.

(3) Holding on to hurt and resentment.

Shouting and (secret) sulking – moods.

Why is the other person upset? (What would make it better?!)

(4) failing to listen to one another.

Intimacy.

Communicate support not just advice.

What does it feel like to be listened to / not to be listened to?

Listen not only with your ears but with your eyes and your heart.

Do you go off at a tangent?

Advice instead of empathy? Do you try to solve problems too quickly?

Do you put aside your agenda and try to understand, see the world through their eyes?

You could ask the other person if you could sit down and talk / listen!

Techniques for listening:

Try to reflect back what the person has said / feel?

What do they really feel most about it? What is at the heart of the issue?

Is there anything you / I / we can do about it?

Is there anything else they want to say?

Marriage alliteration purposes

Marriage is for:

Charity (love), chastity and children.
Partnership, procreation, purity.

And a way of putting it that may have been new to me:

Society (including children), sharing, sexual pleasure, symbol (of Christ as bridegroom of the church)

Thanks to Revd Paul Clark at David & Sarah Wilks' wedding at St Helens, Bishopsgate yesterday for that.

A 9min 50sec wedding sermon on Ecc 4

Rory & Anne-Marie’s Wedding

Well, it’s an emotional day for us all.

I bet even the cake’ll be in tears!

(Boodoom choo!)

(Tough crowd)

(You are allowed to laugh in church – try to get the right moments)

Do you know the story about the Old Vicar rehearsing nervous bride for her wedding?

It’s simple, he said.

All you have to do it walk down the aisle, to the altar and we’ll sing a hymn.

Just remember that:

The nervous bride comes in on her wedding day and is heard muttering to herself all the way in:

AISLE, ALTAR, HYMN!

I’m sure Anne-Marie wasn’t saying that

And even if she was, I suspect the Markhams are a determined plain speaking lot, and she might have a life-long project on our hands!

Rory and Anne-Marie chose our Bible reading from Ecclesiastes.

It speaks of the advantages of a partnership.

2 are better than 1.

That’s true, and very applicable to marriage.

Here are some of the blessings of a good marriage.

Today, Rory and Anne-Marie will become one.

The Bible says its not good for man to be alone, so God makes a helper suitable for him.

Woman is equal to the man but different – complimentary!

Imagine 2 Rorys!

Those of you who know Rory better than I do know what that would be like!

(Best man’s job to be nasty about Rory, so I’ll try to resist!)

How much better a Rory and an Anne Marie than 2 Rorys!

They’re suitable for each other, they go together.

They’ll go together like salt and pepper or a horse and carriage

Or to quote those immortal words from Danny and Sandy in West Side Story:

We go together like
rama lama lama
ke ding a de dinga a dong
remembered for ever like
shoo bop shoo wadda wadda yipitty boom de boom

Hopefully they’ll not go together like chalk and cheese or itchy and scratchy!

From now on, Rory and Anne Marie are a kind of BOGOF – a buy one get one free.

Buy Anne Marie, as it were, and you’ll get Rory thrown in.

The Bible says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh”

Husband and wife become one.

Leaving and a cleaving (cleaving, separating)

It’s healthy for the parents to have a good old cry today

You might have said, “we’re not losing a daughter, we’re gaining a son” – and that’s wonderfully true

But Anne-Marie’s first loyalty now is to Rory, not to Mum and Dad.

Rory and Anne-Marie will form a new household, a new social unit, friendly and welcoming to their former families and friends, but not run by them!

There’s a sense in which Rory and Anne-Marie do have to forsake all others – at least kind of, a little bit.

From this day on, no one else is a prospective husband or wife till the current one drops off the perch.

Rory and Anne-Marie’s 1^st relationship is now with one another, and that will change all their other relationships – we trust for the better.

Marriage is a life-long exclusive unique relationship.

It’s no good if you live as if you’re not married, or as if you’re married to your family and friends, or your jobs, or your hobbies, or whatever.

Remember your married!

And remember to whom your married!

So back to our reading.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work”

Rory and Anne Marie, you’ll be more effective together than you would have been apart.

Marriage is not just an addition, it’s a multiplication.

Anne Marie, you’ll have strengths that make up for Rory’s weaknesses, and presumably vice versa, too.

In our house, I come in handy for emptying the bins and lifting heavy objects.

Mrs Lloyd is marvellous and pretty much everything else.

(She even likes putting up flat pack furniture, can you believe it? What a catch is that!)

2 are better than 1!

“If one falls down, his friend can help him up”

You’ll both fall and fail many times.

You probably will have squabbled by the end of the honey-moon if you last the day!

So be quick to say sorry and forgive.

Don’t get into the blame game

Be friends!

Yes, be lovers and husband and wife and housemates, and partners, and all that: but never forget to be friends!

Help one another.

Be kind and considerate.

“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves”

Be intimate allies.

Be on one another’s side.

Defend one another.

At times, it may have to be Rory and Anne Marie against the world.

And Rory and Anne-Marie right or wrong.

Even when the other person messes up, be there for them, back them up.

No little comments that put him down.

No jokes at his expense.

No criticizing him behind his back with your friends.

So 2 are better than 1.

Marriage is (normally speaking) better than singleness.

But marriage is for better or for worse.

You need to be committed to this marriage even if it doesn’t work out quite as you dreamed:

If one of you, gets sicker and poorer and you think you could maybe upgrade to a better model, that’s when the solemn vows you make today will kick in.

It’s easy to be in love on your wedding day, the challenge comes when you’re tired and broke and one of you is puking up in the middle of the night again, or whatever…

But last of all, how can you make your marriage better and not worse?

Finally, “a cord of three strands is not quickly broken”

Until now its been 2.

Why suddenly this talk of 3?

Remember that Princess Di famously said of her marriage to Prince Charles that:

"There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”

Make Jesus the only 3^rd person in your marriage.

He wont make it crowded.

He’ll make it better, not worse.

(Triangle – Jesus at the top, you 2 at the bottom) as you grow closer to Jesus, you’ll grow closer to one another too.

He needn’t come between you.

Wedding at Cana. Water into wine. Amazing transforming power.

He produced 750 bottles of the finest Châteaux Neff d’Pap

A watery marriage would be good.

A wine-filled, Jesus empowered marriage would be better.

Invite Jesus not only to your wedding, but into your marriage and lives.

Amen.

Well, it’s not too late to change your minds?

You still want to get married?

Okay, let’s do it!

(Please stand)

New Family Connections

Citing Luther in The Freedom of a Christian, Glen spoke on Sunday evening of faith union with Christ as like a marriage. When I am married to Christ by faith in the Spirit, Jesus pays my debts, I take his name, I gain his wealth, his family connections and his status, just as someone marrying a royal might become royal too.

I think the passage Glen had in mind is Three Treatises (Fortress Press, 1970), p286, the section beginning "The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom".

Here it is nicked from the Theology Network site:

The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh. Now if they are one flesh, and if a true marriage--nay, by far the most perfect of all marriages--is accomplished between them (for human marriages are but feeble types of this one great marriage), then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as His.

If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife's, and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His. For, in giving her His own body and Himself, how can He but give her all that is His? And, in taking to Himself the body of His wife, how can He but take to Himself all that is hers?

In this is displayed the delightful sight, not only of communion, but of a prosperous warfare, of victory, salvation, and redemption. For, since Christ is God and man, and is such a Person as neither has sinned, nor dies, nor is condemned, nay, cannot sin, die, or be condemned, and since His righteousness, life, and salvation are invincible, eternal, and almighty,--when I say, such a Person, by the wedding-ring of faith, takes a share in the sins, death, and hell of His wife, nay, makes them His own, and deals with them no otherwise than as if they were His, and as if He Himself had sinned; and when He suffers, dies, and descends to hell, that He may overcome all things, and since sin, death, and hell cannot swallow Him up, they must needs be swallowed up by Him in stupendous conflict. For His righteousness rises above the sins of all men; His life is more powerful than all death; His salvation is more unconquerable than all hell.

Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of its Husband Christ. Thus He presents to Himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word; that is, by faith in the word of life, righteousness, and salvation. Thus He betrothes her unto Himself "in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies" (Hosea ii. 19, 20).

Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying, "If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine," as it is written, "My beloved is mine, and I am His" (Cant. ii. 16). This is what Paul says: "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," victory over sin and death, as he says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law" (1 Cor. xv. 56, 57).

Church Preaches Bible Shock! (version 4)

The Today Programme this morning mentioned this article from the Daily Mail. A similar article appeared in the Telegraph. A couple of people from St Nick's, Seven Oaks are apparently outraged that their vicar and curate should preach that women should be silent in church and that wives should submit to their husbands (1 Cor 14; Eph 5; Col 3). It turns out the sermons in question were two from the curate from 1 Peter 3 which can be heard on the church website and there has been some misunderstanding over some leaflet or other supposedly written by the Rector.

The Mail article is an extraordinary example of making a story out of nothing. No doubt there is a great deal of selective reporting and spin. I'm sure, for example, that the ministers had no intention of saying that women's disobedience to their husbands is the only or even the chief cause of family break up. As the article points out, the church would want to emphasise that men have a primary responsibility to love their wives. It is incontrovertible that marriages and families in Britain are not generally working brilliantly and confusion about the roles of men and women is an important factor.

It's come to something when quoting the Bible outrages that bastion of traditional conservative values, the Daily Mail.

It's interesting that a number of people have apparently said they have cancelled their direct debits / are leaving the church.

I would have thought that people might have expected this kind of teaching from a conservative Evangelical church. Similar things would be taught in many other churches and it is hardly newsworthy. Or rather, its sad that apparently it is!

Angus Mclay the rector of said church describes the events under a very similar headline: Church believes the Bible! Shock! Horror! He does a good job of supporting his curate and highlighting how careful the preacher was to avoid misunderstanding and stress the equality of men and women. He also denied wearing a kilt to church, for the record!

Talking love, sex, relationships and God with the teenagers

God willing on Saturday evening I'm going to talk to and with the teenagers at church about love, sex, relationships and God - it being St Valentine's Day the next day.

What would you say?

Any pointers, tips, resources etc. most welcome.

I might have a look at the Love Wise website later.

CAREFUL Marriage

In The Highway Code for Marriage (CWR, 2005), Michael & Hilary Perrott suggest that marriages should be CAREFUL:

This will involve:

Communication - bringing light

Affection - bringing warmth

Respect - bringing dignity

Encouragement - bringing hope

Forgiveness - bringing peace

Unselfishness - bringing joy

Loyalty - keeping love

HT: JC

Marriage Prep

I have 3 non-churchgoing couples to prepare for marriage this summer and I'm wondering what to do. I'm also looking for a book to reccomend. All tips most welcome.

I was chatting to a minister friend the other day who has prepared a few keen Christian couples for marriage. I think his 4 sessions went something like this:

(1) Covenant

(2) Roles - a.k.a. submission

(3) Communication - a.k.a. don't get a telly

(4) Sex - a.k.a. have a "date night" each week!

Maybe some of his victims can correct my memory!

One friend commented that he thought it might be best to get 2 TVs - avoids a lot of arguments!

Fruit Song

I just wanted to say how much I'd enjoyed Fruit Song which is a setting of part of Song of Songs 2 by Twelth Day that had it's world premier at the Jones wedding. I don't seem to be able to find it on the interweb.

Marriage Preparation

Many of us spend lots of time, effort and money preparing for our weddings. We would do well to prepare so well for our marriages, which after all are for life not just for one day.

Above all, we must make sure we are ready for the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Rev 19-22). Or rather, has Jesus prepared us for that day (Eph 5)?

(HT: DR @ the RB & DJ Wedding)

Pastoral Duties - The Calvin Model!

Calvin was much in demand for suggesting brides for young men. Only a couple of months before he had been writing to Farel himself on behalf of such a young man and saying that he could think off-hand of only three girls who are beautiful, virtuous, and well-dowried, although there are certainly two very pretty girls living near him, but their dowries are not large.

T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin (1975) p178

The 5 Rs of a Successful Marriage

From J John, Ten: Living the Ten Commandments in the 21st Century (Kingsway, 2000) pp117-119:

(1) Respect
(2) Responsibility
(3) Relate
(4) Romance
(5) Resolve

Random Marriage Tips

From my sermon on You Shall Not Commit Adultery.

Cultivating a good marriage is part of the antidote to adultery
If you’ve got fillet steak at home, you’re much less likely to go out for a burger!

So here are some random tips on how to affair proof your marriage.
A basic guide to a successful marriage:

Work hard at your marriage
You’re stuck with it, after all.
Its in everyone’s best interests, including your own, that you make your marriage work.
A happy husband is a happy wife, and a happy wife is a happy husband!
How to make your wife treat you like a king: treat her like a queen.

So, married couples, love one another.
Pray for one another and with one another regularly.
Give thanks for your husband or wife.

Don’t make an idol of your husband or wife.
Remember this commandment is given in the context of the 1st commandment, to have no other gods beside the true God.
Don’t have unreasonable expectations of your partner: they’ll make a rubbish God.
Don’t pin all your hopes of happiness on them.

Maintain other friendships.
Intellectual arguments about theology.
Go down the pub with the other curates not bother Mrs Lloyd over breakfast with infralapsarianism.
That’s not her idea of a good time!

A good marriage requires good communication
Spend time together
Talk!
Open up your hearts and minds to one another
Share your joys, sorrows, concerns
Listen, make time
If there’s a problem, discuss it.

Be on one another’s side! You’re a team.
Never criticise or belittle one another in front of anyone else.
Encourage one another.
Sympathise, don’t always criticise or carp.
Lots of little digs can soon burry a marriage.

Remember why you married that person in the first place.
Have fun together.
Go on a date.
Buy her flowers or chocolates or whatever – there doesn’t need to be a special occasion.
Let’s have a little romance in marriage, even though you’ve bagged your wife!
If there were more courtship in marriage, there’d be fewer marriages in court.
Tell her how nice she looks.
Tell one another how much you love one another and why.
When she’s a mother, make sure she remains your lover.

Remember to say sorry, thank you and please.
Don’t let things fester.
Better to let it go or get it out in the open and over with quickly than nurse a grudge.

Don’t take one another for granted.
Show appreciation.
Celebrate what the other person does that you couldn’t do.

Remember that you’ve got your fair share of weaknesses and foibles and sins and failures too.
Be as forgiving and understanding of your husband or wife as you tend to be of yourself – or more so.

Delight in married sexual love
The Bible can be quite direct and graphic about it.
Proverbs 5 well worth reading.
Prov 5:18-20: “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, 19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated1 always in her love. 20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?”
Did you know that the Bible commands you to delight in your wife’s breasts?
There’s an application for Sunday afternoon!

When a couple have sex they “make love” – that’s a good euphemism for sex.
When a couple make love they celebrate and deepen their love.
Sex is profoundly relational, not just recreational.
Husband and wife are to be treated as persons, not play-things.
Serve one another in the bedroom
Seek to please your husband or wife, not simply to grasp after your own gratification
Don’t have selfish sex
Enjoy one another
There is nothing wrong, or grubby, or shameful or dirty about sex within marriage
God invented sex!
God is for sex and sex is for marriage.
Sex the kind of thing one can talk about in sermons without the slightest unseemliness!
Sex is a good gift from God to be enjoyed within marriage
Sex is a celebration of married love, mutual self-giving, abandonment

Married couples are to make love often.
1 Cor 7:3-5:
“The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”

Ugly Sex

Rev'd Prof J. I. Packer says:

… sexual activity is often out of place – when, for instance, it is directed by such motives as the quest for kicks, or for relief from mental or physical tension, or loneliness or boredom, or the desire to control of humiliate, or mere animal reaction to someone’s sex appeal. Such motives cheapen sex, making it (despite the short-term excitement) trivial and ugly, and leaving behind, once the thrill is over, more disgust than delight. (p84)

...

In casual sex a man does not strictly love a woman, but uses and so abuses her (however willing she may be). Nor can solitary masturbation fulfill God’s ideal; sex is for relationship, not ego trips.

Keeping the 10 Commandments (Crossway, 2007) - previously Growing in ChristI Want To Be A Christian, p85 (1994), originally, I Want to Be A Christian

Off to Wales

We're off for another long hot journey with the boy, but minus Caleb the dog, who is sadly in kennels. We drive to my parents' home in Cardiff tonight (where the interweb and mobile phones continue to work).

Tomorrow Mrs Lloyd is having her first day off from looking after the boy and we are off to the beech, then out for supper in Whitchurch.

D.v. I will marry my sister on Friday at 1pm at the Parish Church of St Mary's a few minutes walk from my parents'.

Post contains spoilers!

We are singing Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah and I will preach on love from 1 Cor 13, Jn 15 and 1 Jn.

Real love is unconditional and permenant and does not depend on loveliness.

Real love is impossible to us. We need God's forgiveness and help.

Jesus loves us, as unlovely as we are, died for us to forgive us and be our example and help.

Copies of 2 Ways to Live available!

I am thinking of quoting the Beatles ("When I'm 64...") and Shakespeare ("Love is an ever fixed mark...").

As its my first wedding with 100s of non-Christians, I'd value your prayers, please.

Full audio available afterwards d.v..

Back to Eastbourne on Sunday to go to Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in London on Monday!

Wedding & Marriage

Your marriage is infinitely more important than your wedding.

Your wedding day lasts 24 hours, your marriage might last 24 years, 48 years, longer.

Your wedding is only for the sake of your marriage.

Think of the thought, time, effort, money, energy, talk and work you have put into your wedding day. Will you put even more effort into your on-going marriage? If you don't it will be a tragedy and your marriage will fail to be all that it could be.

I hope your wedding day is fantastic, brilliant, "perfect". But I don't hope its "the best day of your life". What about the next day? I hope married life just gets better and better, though there will be difficulties and struggles all the way.

Marriage is for better or for worse, but try to make it better.

I'm back for a moment

Tommorow I'm off to Wales to marry my sister.

But that's nothing. My Father in law married 2 of his sisters. His brother married his mother. And yet his father and mother married after he was born.

He is married to Janet Claydon but he also married another Janet Claydon (who is unrelated) to his cousin.

Or something like that.

Purposes of Marriage

According to The Prayer Book, those getting married should duly consider the causes for which Matrimony was ordained:

(1) Children / Procreation - parents - "First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy name."

(2) Chastity / Purity - lovers - "Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body."

(3) Companionship / Partnership - friends - "Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity."