The Deep-Rooted Marriage: A 5-Day Reading PlanSample

Day 5: A Banquet of Delight

The most intriguing vows I [Dan] have ever heard were at a wedding I officiated with a friend. The groom, a brilliant and playful musician and poet, spoke of his love and gratitude to have found a woman whose gifting and eccentricities accented and disrupted his way of being. He was elegant and swift, devoted and honoring.

The bride, a superb theologian, pastor, and spiritual director, offered a lovely, enriching contemplation, involving a quote she read from a thick theological tome that summarized her passion to bring flourishing and goodness to his life.

I could see the audience reflecting my own holy amusement, brilliant joy, and resounding yes. We were seeing them in their compelling uniqueness. Before my friend and I pronounced them husband and wife, I encouraged the others who were married to take on those glorious vows they’d heard as their own.

Then, a party. Blessings. Stories. Lavish food, wine, music, and dancing.

It didn’t feel like a religious event that had been handed off to a party; it was a banquet, a celebration that came after a long and at times arduous battle to find each other, trust, love, and join as one.

I knew their stories and the heartache they’d brought to dating. I knew the betrayals each had suffered and the immensity of their risk to love again. Their love had intensified their sorrow—and deepened their joy of having prevailed together.

We had received a taste of what is to come. The victory and relief. The wholeness and delight. The glorious goodness and forever abundant life. We all need to party, to celebrate and enter into what our hearts most deeply desire, which is to see all forms of death destroyed.

Scripture assures us, “The Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations: he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth” (Isaiah 25:6–8).

Response: How can you create moments of celebration in your marriage that echo the joy and abundance promised in God's banquet of delight?

Prayer: Thank you, heavenly Father, for the banquet that awaits us with you, and for the joy you provide for us to experience in the meantime. Amen.