October 25, 2013
Here comes the Bride
My daughter, Leslie, is getting married tomorrow
and for six months we’ve been in the midst of all the preparation trying to
make everything perfect. This last week we’ve been putting the finishing
touches on the bride herself – the dress, shoes, and make-up selection. A few
days we’ve timed how long it takes to style her hair and played with different
hair care products to see which one gives her the desired look she is after. I’m
now wondering if we believers get so focused on getting to heaven that we
forget the daily preparations needed for being the Bride of Christ. “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him
glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself
ready.” (Rev 19:7 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I like that idea. But the concept of “needed” seems to be quite mobile. When I married Char, inside myself I kind of rolled my eyes at all the hullabaloo and hubbub and planning and complications and preparations for just simply stepping forward from the crowd to pledge my life for her benefit. To me, all of the trouble did not seem needed. But I did not outwardly roll my eyes, because for some reason (which I did not need to know,) to her, all of it was needed. Then since I was pledging myself to her benefit, her need made it my need. I never forget the favorite saying of a good friend who was at our wedding, “Everything is relative.”
-----At one time I would have said that all this preparation to be Christ’s bride is also not needed. When we are extended God’s grace and mercy through Him, we are prepared. There is no corrective work we can do beyond that, because beyond having received His grace is more errors and clumsiness and sins needing the continuation of that grace. The best of our makeup is mud on our faces compared to His perfection. So why put on like we can put on anything acceptable to His perfection?
-----But I’m glad that this life is indeed a preparation for the Wedding Feast. I rejected that idea long ago, along with the idea that I could ever actually be prepared by the time Jesus scoops me up to there. The grace He has for me does not cover me unless my getting under it is real. There is no action I can do which places me under it once and for all. However, God is the grantor of desires regardless of our imperfections. That is grace. He is not to us the rewarder of works lest we get what we deserve.
-----So, all of the hullabaloo and hubbub and planning and complications and preparations I make towards that great and wondrous day are of the correction and trimming and seeding of my ambitions and drives and desires to be what the Lord regards as good and right and just. The problem is that I can not even reach the actual perfection of my own desires. So I must settle for desiring to desire perfection. Everything is relative.
-----The integrity of my desires are then relative to my efforts. They are validated by what I attempt to do. No matter how well or not I do actually do it, they are validated by the actuality of my effort. So it matters not to the Lord that I‘ve put mud on my face in preparation to meet Him. I’ve put on the best mud I could find with the best effort I can make. And that’s validated my desire to get it right. And that makes Him happy to grant my desire, so He does see it through His grace as gotten right. And doesn’t all that make the Wedding Feast of the Lamb most glorious! “…that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10) This grace is in His wisdom to make good of our bad, strength of our weakness, beauty of our mud.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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