I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.
Jeremiah 31:3

As I continue my journey through Jeremiah, I am struck by God’s great love for His people.

It’s a love that is everlasting, committed and faithful.

I have been thinking a bit about weddings as I am preparing for an upcoming wedding and counseling the couple.

Tomorrow is also my 11th wedding anniversary.

The photo is a page from our wedding album. It’s a beautiful moment, captured forever. In a way, this represents not just a page from a photo album, but the first page of married life.

For a young couple getting married, they do not and cannot see the pages that will come after.

When I perform the ceremony and I have the happy couple repeat the words “…for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad…” they have no idea what they are committing to.

Life is unpredictable. The future is unknown.

In the past 11 years, my wife and I have seen the pages unfold in directions and circumstances that we could never have imagined. We have experienced great blessings as well as great hardship.

On our wedding day, we made a committment to love each other and stay together no matter what. By God’s grace and goodness, we have done it.

More than just an album made up of the many pages of life– a Christian marriage is a portrait to the world of the love of God.

The gospel is played out in a Christian marriage as we emulate God’s everlasting love, faithfulness, forgiveness and committment. These attributes of God’s love are not seen often in our world.

Our witness to the world is this: No matter what pages are in the book of our life, we are faithful.

God so loves the world, that He is pursuing it and is faithful to seek it out — regardless of it’s wickedness.
He so loves the world, that He gave His only Son to die for the sake of reconcilation.

Every time we die to our desires, for the sake of love and reconcilation-
Every storm we weather faithfully together –
Every time we give God glory–
We build an album — full of photos depicting the love of the Father.

Whether you are new to marriage, or have been at it for many years, let’s make something beautiful for the world to see.