The beauty of the Lord is in union- an aesthetic reflection on marriage.

Recently I made a trip to Lake of the Woods, Kenora to celebrate the marriage of my cousin and his girlfriend. With the modern attitude towards marital vows, covenant, trustworthiness and the human sexuality this marriage stood as an imperial, glorious reaction. It was a conundrum, a problematic wedding, a thorn in the side of Western values. This wedding ought not to have occurred, the very act of its exchange was so strikingly holy it panged all of our amorality, it was our judgment. This wedding was the judgment of the modern human consciousness, a Christological triumph over the devil and how he has blasphemed and polluted the God-ordained sacrament. The devil would have marital union so fraught with destruction and filth, homosexal agendas, continuous patterns of divorce or the simple choice of a couple not to marry whatsoever; that perhaps God would withdraw His hand from understanding.

Yet it was the very acknowledgment of God, of our glorious God during this marriage, the silent affirmation of both individuals over wilderness and lake and cloud and storm, the recognition of covenant, of Christ and the church, that in one act silenced a hundred years of demonic effort. As the humble preacher led us through prayer, his attitude drawn heavenward to the transcendant sacredness of what we were observing, firm peals of thunder rumbled from overhead. One could almost reach out past the pedestal, and grasp the presence of God over the rain-spattered lake. God was there, there as observer, there to initiate, there to bless, there to judge in His mercy. Not as if our acknowledgment of God in marriage was the initiative of the blessing and presence of God. God's acknowledgment of us was our acknowledgment of Him. God always gives the First Word, God always gives the Final Word. We were caught up into the grace of God as marriage was articulated in the precise manner as He so wished, and this precision silenced us. I will take a risk and call my beloved friends and relatives by name: Justin and Bobby were co-partakers, co-laborers with Christ in proving once for all that marriage belongs to Christ and always will belong to Him... causa finita est.