To love and to cherish

 

To love

To cherish

To be loved

Till death us do part.

With Jesus my Bridegroom King.

This is my solemn vow. 

💗💗💗

I will betroth you to me forever. 

I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. 

And you shall know the LORD. (Hosea 2:19-20) 

Waiting for the Bridegroom

I have always loved wedding vows. 

They are deep and beautiful and speak so much meaning in such words as always thrill my heart.

The other day, the Lord spoke to me through these verses in Hosea. As He did, I realised He was promising Himself to me. I realised again that I am His bride.

To be wedded by the King of Kings. To live as His beloved. It is the most glorious thing.

There is a beautiful parable in the Gospels about this. Beautiful and pressing. 

It begins: “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom'. (Matthew 25:1) Five of them took oil with them and five of them did not. As they waited for the Bridegroom they all slept off, because it was a long time! and yes 2,000+ years has been a long wait for the Bride, but as this parable shows He is coming back!

Anyway, a cry rang out, in the runup to His arrival to alert them to what was about to happen. At this point, the girls start trimming their oil lamps and the ones without 'spare' oil were left asking the others to share, which they of course could not. So they went off to get their own oil as the wise virgins suggested. Then the Bridegroom came!

Verse ten reads: 'The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet'. (Matthew 25:10)

And the concluding words contain the message, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour'. (Matthew 25:13)

I often forget that a bride also means a woman who is about to get married not just a woman on her wedding day or shortly afterwards.

We are the Bride of Christ, about to be wedded. For some reason, this has struck me afresh this evening.

God has called as a watchful Bride to wait for Him and watch for His coming. So ultimately as we wait for the day when He calls us to the wedding banquet we must wait ready. This is the key. 

Then we know we will fulfil our vows to Him. We will truly be His - married, in deepest communion with our Lord.