Anniversary

Tomorrow, July 8, Kim and I celebrate 22 years of marriage. True to form, while most husbands on such an occasion would reach for Hallmark cards and chocolate, I turn to apocalyptic theology.

The writers of some of the earliest Christian literature wrote out of a sense that God was on the verge of creating a new day, and that the world as they knew it was a dim reflection of the world to come, like looking in a darkened mirror. Paul wrote poetically about the fact that everything – all our vaunted knowledge, all our gifts, all our possessions – all was passing away. All that is partial gives way to the complete. “Now I know only in part,” he wrote. “Then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known…And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three – and the greatest of these is love.”

I believe that all experiences of love in this world are a foretaste of that new day when God will be all in all, including the experience of love between husband and wife, parents and children, among friends, and in the covenant bonds of the community of faith.

God is at work in our loving, sharing something of the Divine mystery and inviting us to grow in love. So I hope you will cherish the opportunity to love, no matter the setting, and never take it for granted. Love is the reason we exist, and it will remain when all else is past.

I am thinking about all these things as our anniversary approaches, but mostly I think of Kim. She is a blessing to me in every way.

LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. – Thomas Lux

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