This "Impressive Clergyman" speech from the "Princess Bride" movie never fails to cracks me up, but within the humor lies two true messages: "bwessed...er...blessed arrangement," and
"treasure your love."
Obviously, in our culture of rampant divorce, we (collectively speaking) are NOT listening to The Impressive Clergyman! We don’t seriously consider the word, “blessed,” and we definitely don’t treasure our love. We fall in and out of "love" capriciously, as if our feelings were the measure of love. We have swallowed the pill of self-centered infatuation and called it "love at first sight," or some other such nonsense. I probably shouldn't even write this blog today; I'm far too irritated with our culture's view of love, marriage, divorce, and second, third, fourth, etc., marriages, not to mention the innocent victims: our children. Seriously people; why bother? Get a roommate or even a pet!
Most of us enter into marriage fully planning to honor our vow “until death do us part,” but when the hardships and conflict come (which THEY will, guarantee you that), we bail. We live in a disposable world, and our marriages have become just another item to chuck if it doesn’t “work out.” So why don’t marriages work out? There are lots of reasons, but the main one, I believe, is lack of understanding what the word “vow” entails. From the Bing online dictionary, vow equals: a “solemn pledge: a solemn PROMISE to perform an act, carry out an activity, or behave in a given way. “And promise is defined as: to”vow: to assure somebody that something will certainly happen or be done.” Hmmm…something is rotten in Gotham…
So essentially we are a culture of promise BREAKERS. We have our reasons of course, and I totally support divorce in the cases of abuse and incurable infidelity (and some of us have been abandoned by wayward spouses against our will), but in most cases, we need to learn to persevere. To prepare and dig in for the long haul: to honor our promise of commitment to our husband or wife.
Most of us who are married or divorced have or had a “blessed arrangement.” We promised “for better or WORSE” inside a church building, in front of a minister or priest and our family and friends. Therefore, this vow involved not only the bride and groom, but also the witnesses. We spoke our vows in the presence of others as a sacred promise-not something to break lightly even if every pore of our being cries out to be released from our pledge.
The phrase, "treasuring our love” indicates that WE treat our marriage as a precious covenant, unconditionally loving the person we married. We can choose to act in love, even when our spouse is behaving like an idiot. Not an easy task, but one we CAN do, with the grace of God. Just as witnesses testify in court to tell the truth, “so help me God,” our vows can be upheld with the help of God. So the next time you’re tempted to bump your spouse off a nearby cliff, remember you PROMISED to love him/her until “DEATH do you part”... which, however, doesn’t include murder! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment