L.O.V.E.

Weddings are one of those services that we as ministers provide to people, outside of our Sunday and Wednesday duties...
I really see it as a privilege, that two people would entrust to me the beginning of the most significant human relationship they will ever have. That's pretty heavy stuff...
Except, I guess, if you view marriage through the lens of our culture...where anyone can go online, and in about 15 minutes, be ordained to perform marriages through any number of sanctioning "churches". For some reason this doesn't seem right to me...

It doesn't bother me that you don't have to actually be a pastor to perform marriage ceremonies. I think what bothers me is that this is just another symptom of how we in America have trivialized the significance of the union between a man and woman.

Even if you don't believe in God, there is something pretty amazing about the level of faith and commitment two individuals are placing in and toward one another when they take up the responsibility of uniting in marriage.
Maybe that's the whole issue right there...commitment is so fleeting and relationships treated as utterly disposable, that we take the path of least resistance when entering in to what essentially is a covenant between the man and woman.
Here I go...it's not just the marriage ceremony that's been corrupted, the whole idea of love is completely polluted. Love has become a means to an end, we use it to satisfy our selfish desires and twisted sense of entitlement and gratification. Love is no longer love...it is a vehicle that is bound to the servitude of self.
Love without strings attached...how quaint.
When you talk about deference and sacrifice for the sake of the highest good of your partner, people almost scoff with disdain and disbelief at the "unenlightened, irrelevant and antiquated", idealism and naivete that you possess.
You know what? I'm perfectly content to stay naive, idealistic, unenlightened, antiquated and even irrelevant, if it means that the love i give and receive is unfettered by the freedom genuine love supplies.
The measure of genuine love is just that: it is both freely given and freely received...just as God intended.
Man, i could go on and on, but the bottom line is this:
Love doesn't do what we feel like doing, true love is bound to the character of its creator and in that, we find all that we're looking for and more.
I Corinthians 13) says something like this: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
Indeed, how quaint...