You know, I can't say that I'm very qualified to speak on this subject. I'm not at all experienced in it. But maybe there's something to be gotten from the spectator watching on the hill.

Most people formulate their view of marriage from the surrounding culture. I don't think anyone would argue against that.

And right about now, our culture does noootttt think highly of marriage.

All around us, marriages are broken, and families lie in pieces. Marriage looks limiting. It's called outdated, it's rather inconvenient. But if you simply must marry, then marriage revolves around self; it's understood.

No really,

this is what most of us believe deep down or maybe just up front: that marriage (and relationships in general) is about fulfilling desires, about finding your perfect soulmate that will always be just what you need to help you through life. It must always be exciting, always satisfying, always happy,

or it is void.

Begone "in sickness and in health."

Begone "Until death do us part."

Replace it with, "Until feelings do us part." Age and change do us part. Hardship do us part.

If marriage is about self, why would we stick around when things get tough?

How we miss out.

Marriage can be so much more than a selfish pleasure, a crutch to lean on, a cultural trend to follow.

Culture wants to mark marriage out, to throw it into the basement with the other relics, but culture didn't make marriage. God did.

So why did He?

Like everything else, marriage was created that we might glorify God with it. There are lots of supporting reasons for it, but I won't get into the nitty-gritty.

It's a picture, a shadow you might say, of our relationship with our Christ.

Some of the elements are there: Steadfast love. Sacrifice.

C. S. Lewis wrote about the different types of love. Said brotherly love is two people facing the horizon, said romantic love is two people facing each other. And yeah, marriage is about giving yourself away to another, and your life will focus on that person. But isn't marriage a combination of these?

The good marriages I've watched look like two people hiking down a trail, enjoying each other's company and helping one another through hardship and happiness unto the horizon, until the end of the shadowlands. Because more than both focusing on each other, you both should be focused on God.

A good marriage sanctifies, brings you closer to Christ.

This view radically changes searching for a spouse, radically changes life.

We shouldn't be searching for someone simply good-to-look-at, but someone ready for trial. Not someone that people flock to, but someone that can cheer you up like no one's business. Not one obsessed with bettering self, but one who lives to love others, kind and generous and humble. Someone willing to fight for others, who refuses to forsake a friend.

Because life is a war, long and grueling.

Maybe I'm too much of a poet,

but isn't there something ridiculously romantic, ridiculously enchanting about this gritty lifelong battle for one another, alongside each other, about these hands clasped to eternity's door. It is an adventure into the galaxy that is the soul of another human, a race beside them. And the goal isn't them; it's Christ! So when they stumble and fall, you can bandage them up, listen to them, love them and continue along to the sunrise. All your hopes and dreams do not fall along with them.

When you don't die by their rejection, then you can live with them through pain and fights.

Your sun hasn't set when your spouse shuts you out if you both dwell in the blinding light of Christ's kingdom.

A spouse who is pursuing Christ can the best friend of a lifetime: someone with which to laugh, to fart, to talk deeply, to dream daringly, a safe place to bear your soul, to love, to climb mountains, to raise kids, to worship and pray.

They are someone to walk with between the doors of birth and death.

In a culture that sells us the slogan "self-fulfillment or nothing," will we have the courage to deeply desire the joy and fulfillment of others before ourselves?

To make this life more about Christ than anything else,

and to make this life more about our spouse than ourselves,

to make it more about our neighbors than ourselves?

Marriage is a covenant, a promise.

We can forget, we aren't promising to fulfill all the other person's desires, but we are promising each other our lives.

Christ said it, the greatest show of love is to lay down your life for another person. And that is what we should be doing when we say "I do." The world may scoff and scorn, but their hearts will twinge. They wish they had the courage for such beauty.