True Love in Iceland

"My beloved, today is the day.

The day that, with my entire heart and soul, I vow to you these things before our friends and family and the Lord.

I vow to encourage your kindness. I vow to nurture and pursue your dreams with you. I vow to cultivate in you, and in our marriage, a spirit of passion to serve our friends and family and strangers and to serve the One who is my primary source of passion. 

I vow to forever cherish you as my best friend, my lover, and my life long partner. I vow to stand with you, care for you, live with you and laugh with you when things are good and when things are bad. 

I vow to, just as we see Christ lay down his life for His bride with sacrificial and unconditional love, to lay down my life and to selflessly serve you and your desires before my own. 

I can't imagine life without you and your contagious smile, your unbelievable beauty, your grace and kindness, and your humble heart. You have forever captivated my heart. 

I can't believe that we're here; I wouldn't want to be here with anybody else. You love me in ways I didn't know was possible."

The most beautiful vows in beautiful Iceland.

Please click the link above to watch a truly stunning wedding video made for a couple who eloped to Iceland. Credit goes to photographer Micah Hamilton. This was shared on my Facebook newsfeed, and I watched it because Iceland is gorgeous and I'm a sucker for wedding videos. I've rewatched it at least a dozen times because of the groom's vows. The bride's vows are very sweet, but the groom's words took me by surprise. The freedom with which he expresses his adoration for his bride and his commitment to her is, I think, unusual. He speaks longer and more ardently than his bride even. In my experience, to find a man who articulates himself this way, with that kind of passion, is rare. But what thrilled me even more was the groom's use of Jesus Christ as an example to himself as to how he should love his wife. 

"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am telling you that it refers to Christ and the church."-Ephesians 5:25-32

That whole passage is about one-ness in marriage; that concept of becoming one "echad" flesh. A concept which is obviously physical, but at the same time deeply spiritual.  Did you read it?  "A profound mystery"- in this sexually liberated/exploited culture, can you grasp that intimacy, sex, was meant to be mysterious? Two people becoming one should be the essence of a profound mystery within the forever commitment of marriage wherein lies an example of the love and unity between Christ and the collective souls (the church) for whom he laid down his life. Can you fathom the weight and depth of that? To have a man love you like that…To have a man strive towards that standard of love… That God expects couples to love each other as Christ loved, to lay down our lives to make each other holy… Can you imagine such love to be found on earth?

"How deep your love is, to love me just like this."

-December by Tow'rs.