Love, Marriage, and Forgiveness

Recently, I had the honor of presiding at the wedding of a friend of mine. The bride and I had worked diligently together, crafting a beautiful, spiritually meaningful ceremony. When it came time to write my homily, I reflected on First Corinthians 13:4-7, 13:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things....And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

The bride and groom came to this marriage with their eyes wide open, as well as their hearts. We have just heard God’s take on love and all that it is. It is beautiful, powerful, and inspiring. Yet, how many of us, married or not, accomplish this sort of love in our own lives?

We were given this beautiful description of love and all of its characteristics to give us hope, to give us encouragement to work at love and loving one another so that one day we might say we know this sort of love in our relationships. Yet, we do already, as Christians, experience this sort of love. It comes with our acceptance of Christ into our hearts. We know that this sort of love is how God loves us. Through this love, we have our faith; through this love, we know hope.

How, then, can we bring this sort of love to bear on our lives and into our relationships?

To accomplish that, takes work, the sort of work which begins with prayer and continues with open and honest conversation. Sounds like a recipe for a good marriage! Marriage is best begun with prayer and continued with open and honest conversation.

No marriage exists in which there is always agreement, feelings are never hurt, space is never invaded, and forgiveness never needed. Every marriage has days where arguments arise, words are spoken and later regretted, and forgiveness is required. The thing is, when we strive to have the sort of love in our hearts that God desires for us, we survive the arguments and we can ask our beloved for forgiveness -- forgiveness which is given because of and through this great love in our hearts. Yet, for forgiveness to have any healing power at all, it needs to be truly received by the one asking for it. Our ability to receive forgiveness takes a willingness to first forgive ourselves which is hard work sometimes.

It might be said that forgiveness is the work of love as well as the work of marriage. Be ready, willing, able to say, “I’m sorry,” owning and naming whatever you said or did. Be ready, willing, able to say, “I forgive you” and mean it. If it takes a couple of days or even a week to get to that point, say it. The more you forgive each other within this great and powerful love, the more truth you speak and the more love there is…deep and abiding love…which will carry a couple, a family, a friendship through the years ahead in an abundance of joy!

Good Friends Who Speak the Truth in Love

This afternoon I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with a good friend of mine who loves me and knows she can speak the truth to me even when it might be a truth difficult for me to hear. Having a friend like her is an incredible gift of God; a resource that I have come to rely on over the last four years. The cost involved in having a friend like that though is in the reciprocity of the friendship, the covenantal nature of it. If I have a friend who lovingly speaks the truth to me, then I must be willing to do the same in return.

So, when I think of the covenantal nature of our relationship, I think of how scary it is to realize that there is something to be said that isn't quite so easy to be heard, yet there's something in my heart that says, "It's okay." Maybe that's history, perhaps it's God. Relationships like ours don't just happen. We have worked on it; always being honest with each other. Sometimes, it's the fact that we are honest with each other which makes it possible to be honest with ourselves.

Jesus said we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. In today's world, sometimes it is hard to understand how our neighbors are in such horrible need. Today's society is all about loving ourselves; yet it all seems so shallow when there are folks being shoved to the margins of society because they are ill with a dementing disease, or because they are homosexual, or because they are transgender. It all seems so shallow when children and families are homeless, are preyed upon by human trafficking predators, go hungry, or don't receive adequate healthcare. It seems so shallow when our government reaches for the programs which feed and clothe the hungry and naked before the programs which build machines of war to provide the cuts and dollars needed to balance a budget--a budget which is so out of kilter with what the country needs.

We need more people who are willing to speak the truth in love...to those they love as well as to those who represent them in government.

Apathy and loving our neighbors do not go together. Life takes work. It is the work that life requires which makes it worth living and celebrating!