Remembering your promises

It was a complete joy (and a real honour) to attend a wedding yesterday.

Attending weddings always reminds me of my own wedding, and especially of the promises that I made to my wonderful wife Sally on that day.

Those promises are such huge things to say, in public, and (in our case, we believe) in the presence of God. And it’s kind of odd that we rarely remind ourselves of these things (maybe this is just us?).

I suppose anniversarys are celebrations, but maybe we should be better at reminding ourselves of our vows on an ongoing basis.

I was thinking that we are now moving quickly away from the all-our-friends-are-getting-married phase through the all-our-friends-are-having-children phase. We found it hard to name the people who are likely to be bride and groom at the next wedding we attend. So we will be reminded of the wedding vows less often and we shall hear fewer wedding sermons and wedding speeches.

Weddings are, of course, all about the two people getting married. But they are also useful reminders of the nature of the ongoing, practical, sacrificial, unconditional love that underpins any committed relationship and that has to be worked out through the gritty and unpredictable mess of daily life lived together.

So here’s a little prompt. If you are married or in a civil partnership (apologies for the topic if you aren’t), why not remind yourself of your vows? Or, if you’ve been married a while, why not even plan to renew your vows in public? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. As well as reminding yourselves of your promises to each other, it might be a reminder to others about what love is.

I can’t help but feel that that’s something the world needs right now.