Someone tried to put a minister’s duties in a nutshell.
Hatch, match and dispatch. Dedications of children who one day get married and finally die. To my own shame I have to admit that it is only with funerals that I have never had a single comeback.
But it is with weddings where I have seen the biggest shift over the years. From time to time a bride would request the removal of the word ‘obey’ from the vows. Yes, times have changed and it may be fitting to remove this word. But it is the second request that puzzles me. Couples, from time to time, ask if I could please remove the phrase ‘until death us do part’.
A hire purchase is 60 months, a house loan 20 years, but ‘until death us do part’ seems almost like a life sentence. Never in history has the institution of marriage been more challenged. People choosing to live together, people getting divorced for no real reason. Unfaithfulness to a partner and a self-centred philosophy make marriage either a no-no or a short-term arrangement.
But for the many happily married couples, marriage is still the best gift God has ever given us.
If you are happily married, you are blessed. Amen
