No, we’re not renewing our vows or anything ~ yet! 😉 Summertime is here, and that usually means weddings … when we were in college, the first weekend after Graduation a whole slew of our friends and acquaintances got married! Why then? Well, EBC did not allow you to get married during the school year unless you were willing to miss a whole term. While the intention was good – they wanted newly married couples to not have to deal with being newly married and have the stress of college – it didn’t exactly do what was intended because Spring term had a lot of girls way more focused on wedding plans than actually learning! Talk about stress. 🙂 Anyways, I digress.
Today I was talking to a friend about the Church in America. We were talking about the different things the Church focuses on, and how, to us, those things seem like distractions. The image came to mind of a woman getting ready for her wedding day, flitting about from project to project, worrying over the seating, the guest list, the flowers, the dress, and the food, while all the while completely ignoring her bridegroom, and sometimes, even care of herself. She is disheveled, distracted, frantic, and a little OCD. Instead of drawing close to her fiancé, and learning more about Him, and learning who He desires her to be, she is chasing down the latest in technology, wanting the ceremony to be sure to be the newest and best. Instead of studying the letters He sent her, she studies letters others have written about Him. Instead of focusing on Him, she focuses on the guests for the wedding and making sure she gets everyone possible to come.
This bride is all about the outward appearance of things. Half of her body is hurting, a quarter of it is diseased, but she covers all that up with makeup and hopes for the best. She doesn’t want to admit she is sick, tired and needs help. She won’t listen to the gentle voices telling her to rest and meditate on her bridegroom, instead, she pushes herself harder. She thinks, maybe, if she ignores the diseased part of her body it will just get better. She knows for a fact the hurting part of her body can just suck it up and keep moving. Her hands no longer work, they’ve given up, since they can’t move properly, due to her elbows having arthritis. Her feet are bare, cracked and dirty because since her hands don’t work, she cannot wear shoes. Her heart is failing, because her arteries are clogged, due to trying out too many wedding cake samples and reception menu ideas. Her eyes have told her knees that they won’t work with them anymore because they are not doing what the eyes think they should be doing.
The sad part is, she thinks she knows what her Bridegroom wants. She thinks she has Him all figured out, so she doesn’t need to listen to Him or study Him. The bride thinks that she needs to be large and boisterous, not healthy and wise, even if that means being smaller than what society says is good. She is selfish, wanting all the best of everything, instead of listening to her Bridegroom, Who calls her to come away with Him – to leave all the fuss and bustle behind.
