mortification of the flesh

I’m feeling a bit dizzied by all the wedding details yet to be accomplished. That and the sobering magnitude of the commitment we’re about to make!

Mike Mason expresses my wariness: “There were many times when I felt quite seriously that everything my life had stood for was being challenged, or that somehow I had been tricked into selling my very soul for the sake of a woman’s love! In short, there was a lot at stake as the wedding day approached; in fact there was everything at stake.”

I do not feel tricked or hoodwinked. I feel painfully aware of the impending commitment: welcoming it, yet reverently fearing it at the same time. Kevin and I are about to embark on a transformational journey from which there is no return. I tire of leaving him at the end of our days together. By the end of the week I won’t be able to get rid of him. We’ll be (willingly) cooped up together in a log cabin with coffee, popcorn, movies, books, and plenty of taxidermy! We’ll be learning about each other in new ways, very vulnerable ways. And we will be changed, “as iron sharpens iron.” Kevin says marriage involves “mortification of the flesh.” Doesn’t sound pretty, does it? Perhaps it’s fitting that we will share a cabin with stuffed wild animals: the heads of 3 big-horn sheep rams, 2 caribou, and one complete cougar shot by our hosts’ son. Mortification, indeed.

Oh, I know that marriage is not all grim. In fact, I know many people for whom marriage is absolute joy and endless delight. And they’re not living in denial either! However, even they have their moments of rubbing the rough edges off each other.

I have a lot of things to do, so I’ll direct you to more of Mike Mason’s reflections:

But how hard it is to give everything! Indeed it is impossible. One can make a symbolic gesture of giving all, accompanied by a grand dramatic public statement to that effect (which is what happens at the wedding ceremony). But this is just a start. The wedding is merely the beginning of a lifelong process of handing over absolutely everything, and not simply everything that one owns but everything that one is.

Read more …

Actually, let’s end with Philippians 2:1-11.

¹ Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
   and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.