Wedding Night Anticipation

OH that look. You know it. The mesmerized groom gazing toward the place where his bride will emerge from. Enough with the procession of colored chiffon adorned by bridesmaids! Enough with adorable kids bearing rings and flinging flowers! He wants to see her. His promised one. His beloved. His future. 

She walks toward him and her eyes speak a love language that he alone can decipher. Caught up in their moment, time freezes and friends fade. It is only them. They smile, they gaze, they giggle. When finally the words, “You may now kiss your bride” are uttered, they turn toward the congregation, smile, and mentally fast forward to their long awaited wedding night.

I’ve been down this road three times now….mother-of-the-bride, mother-of-the-groom, and more recently, mother-of-the bride again. Each time I am struck by the not-so-subtle longing in each of their eyes. They have waited. And it finally has arrived…the day of the wedding and the night of the consummation. The joy of the dream coming true has arrived and the tension of holding back no longer clouds the couple’s sanity. The two can actually, in some miraculous way, become “one flesh”. I cry at each ceremony. Not because of my loss but because I see the astounding visual God gave us in marital intimacy.

He wants us to live in longing for a consummation with Him that surpasses anything we could ever desire.

Make no mistake. God gave us our passions. It was HIS idea to create in us an appetite for intimacy, pleasure, satisfaction, and love. We have this craving to know and to be known. Unfortunately, often we seek these things in harmful ways. The One who created us, knows us. So, when He uses the writer of Ephesians to convey the idea of “mystery” in the marriage roles, he is stating a profound word to us, namely, that marital intimacy is a picture of Christ and the church. Have you ever wondered why God gave us the gift of sex? I believe above and beyond procreation, it was to give us a visual of the deeply spiritual need to be vulnerable and to be known…to be embraced and to be accepted. The One who made us also gave clear parameters regarding such a mystery. Jesus told us this, ‘Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

And God has joined us together with Himself.

So the next time you witness a wedding ceremony, ponder on the hankering in your own heart. Let it draw you to the Perfect Husband (Isa. 54:5). Quit selling your body and soul to lesser gods that ultimately dull your senses to authentic Love. There is ultimate fulfillment that will ultimately be realized in God alone with the most extraordinary of wedding feasts!

I believe the preparations are currently underway. I can almost feel the God-embrace as He calls me His “Beloved”.