( I wrote this wedding prayer/blessing for my good friends Rachel and Alain Emerson for their wedding service... Alain wanted it based on “their song” Frozen Lake, by my good friend Iain Archer (“I want to be someone who makes you feel beautiful... I want to be someone who covers you in love”)... I decided to add a few other ingredients... A poem by Wendell Berry shown to me by Gail Hefner at the recent Jubilee Conference... the events of Easter weekend, the weekend before... the goings on of Northern Ireland’s First Minister in recent days... oh aye... and Rachel and Alain’s marriage!... all in 443 words!)
To fancy someone in the schoolyard
Is so easy
How many times
The infatuation
Crazy dreams
And then moving on to someone else...
To marry someone
Now that is another matter
To commit forever
Not only when the honeymoon beckons
But when recession bites
When the children throw up in the night
When one of you gets sick
With no hope of a turning circle
To love no matter what
Now that is not schoolyard
And so we pray Rachel and Alain
That you find the grace for whatever comes...
But we your friends dare to pray for more
We pray for more than “make it through”
We pray for holiness
We pray that you would both feel beautiful
And be covered in love
By He who first loved us
As He demonstrated to us on this Easter week
When he denied Himself
And took up His cross
The selfless, suffering servant
Then crashed through the tomb
In Resurrection power
To make everything beautiful in its time...
Rachel... Alain
May the implications of this week
Make you feel beautiful
And cover you in love
And that now as you two become one
In these vows, promises and commitments
We pray that from this source from a grace warmed lake
In these frozen northern shores
That you Alain will be given enough grace
To make Rachel feel beautiful
And cover her with love
And that you Rachel will be given enough grace
To make Alain feel beautiful
And cover him with love...
Because this is holiness
Not that we keep rules and laws
Which we only given to keep us from anarchy
For holiness is not cold hard tablets of stone
No... holiness is the warm tender loving heart of God
And we are holy
Not when we stand arrogantly proven right
But when we fall
And love the Lord our God
With all our heart, soul, mind and strength
And our neighbours as ourselves
Holiness is alive, vibrant and pulsing with transformative power
To make people feel beautiful
And cover them with love...
And so we pray that your marriage is holy
And as you bump into people
By strategic intention or casual accident
In this Church
In other places of prayer
In streets of mission
In dental clinics
In fitness suites
In Ugandan building sites
In soccer stadiums
Or in your brand new home
That your lives will leave behind them a deep holiness
To make everyone you touch
Feel beautiful and covered in love
Rachel... Alain... God bless your love to all of us
And may we in turn love you and make you feel beautiful
With our ongoing prayers.
AMEN