Twenty-one Years

Today my wife and I celebrate our survival of twenty-one years together as husband and wife.

Yesterday she was astonished to realize that she had forgotten our wedding anniversary until yesterday.  She shared this with me and I was startled to realize that while I thought of it all last month and even most of last week, that it had disappeared from my thoughts that day as well.

Ouch!  What a powerful reminder of our dysfunctional ways on account of our frailty as sinful humans!

On the other hand, it also serves as a powerful reminder of who has joined us as one and who it is that preserves us as one.

How I wish that I lived in full acknowledgment of the man and husband that the Lord has made me to be by His gracious decree.  My life surely does not serve as a witness to His gracious gifts and promises.  My faithfulness to my wife is sadly lacking.  Thankfully, it is not my faithfulness that matters.  Thankfully, she knows this, too.

As a concluding portion of our wedding worship service, I shared this promise and confession:

My dear bride, Stephanie,

     Today I have made to you a very bold promise, to be to you a true and faithful husband.  This promise I do not make in my own name, for I know that on the basis of my own name I am but a bum.  But I also bear another Name, the Name of my Lord Christ, and in His Name I am a prince.  And so, in the Name of my Lord Christ I will be to you your prince.

I have been true to my word.  By my own name and efforts I have been a bum.  I cannot even number the ways in which I have failed my bride as her husband.  I certainly have not been faithful in forsaking all others besides the Lord.  How many times have I put myself and my desires and my emotions above her?  How many times have I selfishly enumerated her shortcomings?  How many times have I counted as shortcomings her personal needs of body, heart, mind, and spirit?

Thanks be to God that she remembers the latter part of my promise.  Thanks be to God that she counts me as a good and loving and faithful husband not because of what I say and do, but because of the Lord’s gracious decree.

And this is what she continually reminds me as what she counts as the reason for me being a blessing in her life.  She reminds me that as her husband and also as her pastor I direct her the Lord and his grace, mercy, and peace.  She does count me as a prince for His sake.

What a wonderfully refreshing reminder this serves us regarding Christ and His Church.  What we observe Him doing for us is what He does for His beloved bride.  In fact, what He does for us flows directly from what He does for His dear bride.  This is what St. Paul blessedly proclaims in Ephesians 5:21-33.

The Lord’s goodness is displayed in everything, and especially in the one-flesh union of His Church that is reflected in our one-flesh union that we celebrate this day.  Truly it is a happy and blessed anniversary!

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12/12/12

     In our household this unique alignment of repeating numbers was especially significant. While the rarity of this occurrence is obvious to all, being the last calendar date with such repeating digits for this millennium, for us it also is our twentieth anniversary of our wedding. Thus it is not only significant as it draws special attention to the twelves of 12/12/12, but it also embodies the twenty for the fulfillment of our twentieth year together as one in the Lord, 12/12/2012.

      We both included this in our little cards to each other, but my wife designed a graphic that captures the essence of the symbolism beautifully.

     In our discussions throughout that evening, in addition to giving thanks to God for His gift of bringing us together to live as husband and wife, and especially His merciful and continual intervention to keep us from destroying this union so that we are brought together again and again in His love through His never-ending forgiveness, we also noted how this special choice of dates is one that we chose according to what He worked for us as we attempted to find a date when all of our family and friends could be with us on the day of our wedding. In this we acknowledged that we had no idea that He was giving to us also this special date on which our twentieth year of marriage would be marked perfectly by the numerical notation of 12-12-2012.

      This stands as a reminder of how the Lord always works on our behalf even without our awareness, acknowledgment, or even asking. It is a wonderful blessing that the Lord Jesus has given us a common prayer among us where by His command we do acknowledge all things and receive them with thanks, as we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

      Luther gives a wonderful explanation to this petition:

Give us this day our daily bread.   What does this mean?—Answer.      God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, to all wicked men; but we pray in this petition that He would lead us to know it, and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

What is meant by daily bread?—Answer.      Everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body, such as meat, drink, clothing, shoes, house, homestead, field, cattle, money, goods, a pious spouse, pious children, pious servants, pious and faithful magistrates, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

+ + +        If we are willing to see it, the Lord makes His goodness and mercy manifest in everything in our lives, even in something as seemingly tiny as a grouping of repeating numbers. Certainly He does so in our marriages that demonstrate to us His holy union to His bride the Church, and in the manifold blessings poured out to us, the children of that union, through the means of grace administered to us within His everlasting household and especially at His Table. Through this we observe in the clearest way possible how truly good our Father and God is.

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