Taking Your Vow Seriously

This is my beloved and this is my friend.

Song of Songs 5:16, NASB

To have and to hold . . . for better or for worse . . . till death us do part. . . .

You remember your wedding vows, don’t you? That formal litany of words that marries you and gives meaning to everything else that happens during the wedding day, not to mention your relationship. But there’s a surprising trend noticed in the wedding industry that’s happening these days.

In a May 2010 article titled “Couples Take Their Vows in a New Direction,” USA Today reported the following: “The Bible is losing ground on the wedding aisle, and forever may follow obey into oblivion, particularly for those who marry in civil or nondenominational ceremonies.” The piece goes on to interview the editor of Brides magazine who says that “many couples prefer to start their lives together with ‘guidelines, not a straitjacket of rules.’” The Reverend Ema Drouillard, who is also quoted in the article, says 50 percent of couples now refuse the word forever “because ‘they really don’t believe in it.’”^a

It’s sad, don’t you think?

Author Fred Smith tells the story of an experience he had in a doughnut shop in Grand Saline, Texas, several years ago. There was a young farm couple sitting at the table next to his, the young man dressed in overalls, his wife in a gingham dress. After they finished their doughnuts, the man got up to pay the bill, but his wife didn’t get up to follow him. When he had paid the check, the man came back and stood in front of his wife. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up—and that’s when it became apparent that she was wearing a full-body brace. He lifted her out of her chair, and they backed out the front door to the pickup truck together, a man with a woman hanging from his neck.

Everyone watched the man gently put his wife into the truck and drive away. No one said anything for a while, until a waitress remarked, almost reverently, “He took his vows seriously.”^b

Take a moment to reflect on your vows. They may have included promises to love, comfort, honor, and keep each other; in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse; in sadness as well as joy; forsaking all others—as long as you both shall live. Renew your commitment to embody those vows today.

One vow made and kept after the tempest, is worth one thousand promised in the same.

—Thomas Fuller

^a 11

^b 12

From the book