An Anglican Compendium of Thoughts and Prayers: Till Death Do Us Part

One of the most beautiful life experiences I enjoy is the celebration of a wedding.

Standing before God they proffer their vows; in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for the rest of our lives, until death do us part. Amen

They have dreams of their future and plans for how they will live out their lives, growing old together. But they receive no guarantee of what may be around the corner, or exactly what ‘for better or worse’ may mean as the weeks and months melt into years and decades. Yet they celebrate their ‘yes’ with joyful hearts.

For those who have been married for many years, you may feel it’s their sheer youthful ignorance or lack of life experiences that let them make such a commitment. You could be partly right. But in most cases there is something much more.

It’s the conviction that the one thing that makes our lives real and worth living is that pure committed love never counts the cost. Real love says ‘we’ll take the risk and pay the price, whatever it may be, because we want a real life and not just a performance or show.’

Nowhere are the consequences of a simple ‘Yes’ spoken long ago more visible than in Jesus’ mother, Mary, who said ‘Yes’ to God while still a teenager and then stood in silence at the foot of her son’s Cross. And even then her answer to God was still ‘Yes.’

Almost all of us have spoken our key ‘yesses’ to God at the time of marriage, or ordination, or at the birth of a child, and at many other times as well. And now most of us stand somewhere in the middle of living out our ‘yesses.’

Doing so can at times be painful, distressing, or just simply boring, and our ‘Yes’ can grow faint. That's when we need to remember exactly why we spoke our ‘Yes’ in the first place: because we loved and we knew that love alone can bring us life.

Mary’s love for Jesus and confidence in God’s love for her kept Mary from despair and carried her to Easter morning. Easter will come for every one of us, as long as we allow God to love us through the darkness.