Our Daughter Is Getting Married Today

I’m sitting here back in Perth, our hometown, on an impossibly mild and sunny day. Our daughter’s wedding day. Why am I more excited than nervous? Why do I feel I won’t cry but will laugh a lot? Why might that all change the minute I see her before we drive to the church?

And what will her dress be like? I’m a fashion junkie so I’ve been wondering for a while. She’s a little bit hipster and a whole lot whimsy, so I’m keen to see how that gets played out in fabric and style.

Uncharted territory for sure!

Now I have some things to say at the wedding, so I am not going to steal my own thunder right now.  But suffice to say, some 24 years after her birth, we’re super grateful for the young woman she has turned out to be. And for her soon-to-be-husband. They love each other and they love Jesus.

24 years ago. The headlines screamed “The Day The World Changed”.  No, not her birthday, but a few months later when the Twin Towers fell on September 11th.  That has set in motion a seismic couple of decades across the globe. There is war and the rumour of war. There is terror and there is strife and turmoil.  What world are we going to be bringing this young girl up in to?

And now that strife and turmoil is eating deep in the Western psyche. People are delaying marriage. The birth rate in the West has slowed to the point that for some countries, a demographic collapse is now unavoidable.

The last few weeks have been turmoil too. The big stuff. The political stuff. The stuff that shows up the hatred of God in our world. The refusal to acknowledge the humanity of others.

And yet, in the midst of it, the small stuff. Wedding plans. Food preparation. Is this the right colour for that?  What about those orders of service?

It’s easy to think that most of our lives are lived with the big stuff in mind. Especially in days of 24 hour online life. But it’s not true. Most of our lives are commutes, meals, work or study, family have-to’s, occasional family want-to’s, trips to dentists and physios. Most people are just keeping their heads down and trying to get on with it. The grind.

Yet there is beauty in the midst of all of that too. I ran around the river the other morning with an impossible stillness in the pre-dawn air, the city still fresh from an unseasonably wet winter, and a peach-coloured sky beckoning the sun.

But it’s not just physical beauty. For those with the eyes of faith, there’s a spiritual beauty too.

And it’s a spiritual beauty that changes you. That beckons you to be brave. To do brave things. Brave things like marry young and have children. I love the fact that Christian young people are marrying younger and deciding in a world where more of their peers are deciding not to, to have children. And having them earlier and more often.

And that’s not so that we can breed secularism out. That’s partly true that it will. All religious communities have a higher number of children than average.

But it’s not the goal, nor the reason. Christians are marrying young and having more children because they have something many of their secular friends do not have: hope.

Hope does not belong to the secular frame. Secularism cannot offer any assurance that beauty, truth and goodness will have the final say. Christian young people are not simply standing before each other and making vows. They are standing before God and making vows, in hope. Hope that he who raised Jesus from the dead, will give life to their mortal bodies too.

I’ve spent a lot of time with younger Christians over the past couple of years, either speaking to them in conferences and leadership events, or pastoring them in churches.

And compared to secular young people, it just hits different. A marriage of a young Christian couple is a great apologetic. It showcases the hope of the gospel to those who ask (1 Peter 3:15).

And what I love too, is that we are singing hymns on this wedding day. Including one, coincidentally – or providentially – that was sung at our wedding 30 years ago next April. God is indeed faithful 😉

And so it is our daughter’s wedding day. I dropped Jill off at Sophie’s place which was a gaggle of noise, and food and laughter and love, and it made me realise why God uses a wedding feast to describe his last day salvation celebration.  I then went to a local cafe and stood in the early spring sunshine waiting far too long for my flat white (which was worth the wait actually), feeling the joy of the occasion.

And in a few short hours, that little girl that I held for the first time 24 years ago, trussed up in a white blanket to keep her tiny premature body warm, will be walking down the aisle with me, dressed in far finer white than back then.

I don’t think I will cry. But I don’t know!  You can never be sure of these things. I didn’t exactly cry on my wedding day, but gee, was I nervous!  For someone whose whole life has been about public speaking, I could barely breathe when I was about to say my vows.

So, as I said, who knows?

But I do know this. The whole day will be a sweet taste of the hope that is to come. My daughter, her fiancé, our two families and the vast bulk of our friends don’t simply see marriage as a great answer to a desire for a long term romantic relationship. It’s much more than that for those who follow Jesus.

And I do pray that those who attend who do not follow Jesus, will notice that it just hits different!

And I do pray that, like Jill and I, she and her husband will grow closer than they could have imagined on this day. Until that day, with all the saints, we are presented as a spotless Bride before our eternal Bridegroom.

And even if we have a tear in our eyes that day, I have it on good authority that he personally will come over and wipe them away.