Thursday, February 29, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
I now pronounce you man and wife
Blessed is the man and women who trust in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord, for they are like trees planted beside the waters, stretching out their roots to the stream.
At Danville Correctional Center the visitor tables are set quite far apart, so that in a room that once held 30 there are only 10 tables for visitors. The visiting day is divided into three 4 hour blocks. Weddings are always held in the 8-noon time slot.
In the last few years the prison has allowed weddings on the last Wednesday mornings of January, February, June and July. Yesterday I performed five weddings. Inmates and their fiancees were offered a photo session. Three of the five fiancees brought guests. One brought her mom, one a daughter, and the third a son.
Though kept more apart than together, the affection between these couples drew me in. Our conversations revealed longsuffering, patience, humility. From five years to twenty-five years, the couples knew each other well.
Do you remember that verse in Jeremiah 29, when God comforted his prophet before he headed away into exile?
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.”
Many years ago I hit upon this verse to emphasize how close and free a marriage can make us. We are not nearly so alone after the wedding. We are “one flesh.” So I added a word, repetitively, to the verse:
For I know the plans I have for you together,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you together, plans to give you hope and a future together. Then you will call on me and come and pray to m together, and I will listen to you. Together.”
As I shared this thought time after time yesterday morning, five weddings all in a row, I felt its truth more and more. The oneness isn’t always emotional or physical, but it is always spiritual. God honors marriage far beyond what we can even imagine, and he wants us to stand together on that covenant he has made with us.
I enjoyed the two kiddos, both 11 years old, so much. Their smiles were alive and open, their comments were touching and funny, and when they signed the license as witnesses, they each used their “print” signatures. They both tried to make their hand write  in cursive, but they just couldn’t do it.
They were proud of their signatures, though. And when they saw the smooth-flowing streams of the cursive signatures of their parents, their eyes got wide. I know they were thinking, “Could I just try my signature one more time?”  Watch my letters slice through the air, making magic?
I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart.
I imagined in a few years marrying the two nearly teenagers. They looked to me like they would have made a great match. Their parents were bringing them up well, with enough strength but not too much. At least that’s what it looked like to me, in my few moments getting to know them. In a prison’s visiting room. As their parents were tying the knot.
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
A pretty special day for all of them.
(Jeremiah 17, Psalm 1, Luke 8, Luke 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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