Читать книгу Planning Your Marriage Service - Margaret Webber - Страница 6

Congratulations! Together you are beginning to plan what may well be the most important day of your life. Except for birth and death, when someone else normally does the planning, no change in our lives is as significant as the change from being single to being married. Here you have the one opportunity in your life to plan the statement of faith and commitment you want to make and to participate in it with the person who means the most to you, as well as with your family and friends.

The plans you make also involve more than just one day. They involve the days before and the days after. If you plan well, you will learn things that will affect your life now; you will look forward to the day itself with a greater understanding and deeper joy. And if you plan well, your married life will be affected; you will understand better how the love of God and God's people, the church, is a strength on which to depend. Good planning makes a real and lasting difference.

The service you are beginning to plan is one in which you say something and do something. What you do is enter into a new relationship, create a new family. You are changed by what you do. But you also say something. Your marriage service says something out loud to your friends and family about your love and your faith, and that will affect them also. What you do is not much affected by the choices you make about the service. The service will take place anyway and you will still be married whether the choices you make are good or bad. But what you say depends very much on your choices; if you choose well, others will hear about the love and joy you have found, share it more fully, and support you in living it out.

Perhaps, then, you should begin by spending some time thinking together about what it is you would like to say. You may want to make some notes on a piece of paper. What is it you feel about each other? What are the strengths you have found in each other and want to give to each other? What are your hopes for your marriage? Why is it important to you to be married in church? How important are your friends and family in your lives? And what does God's love mean to you? Where do you see God's love at work in your lives and the lives of others? When you can answer questions like these, it will be easier to make the choices that this book describes.