"We shall always be with the Lord"

There are multiple reasons to be excited about your wedding day. One is, perhaps, just the sheer relief of having the weight of all the preparations and stresses finally coming to an end. Another, of course, is the joy of having the people you love most (and who love you most) all together in one place. And then there is simple delight in the beauty of it all … the dresses, the flowers, the table cloths and candles, the culinary fare. But most of all (as I have lately been reminded by listening to a recently married couple!) … most of all, the bride and groom long for and look forward to that day because, finally, they will get to be together! Finally they will wake up, every morning, to each other’s faces! Finally they will live together in the same dwelling!

And we can speak similarly about “the marriage of the Lamb” – about the coming of Christ to receive His bride. There are multiple reasons to long for and look forward to that day! In that day, the weights and stresses of this life will finally, mercifully have come to an end! In that day, there will be a family reunion of family reunions! And the beauty of that banquet? Well, let us just say that the beauty of our earthly weddings is only a foretaste of the beauty on which our eyes will feast in the new earth! And not only these things, but (unlike in our earthly marriages!) sin will have been forever abolished from the earth – “a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”

But, as with earthly brides, what Christ's bride longs for the most (it is to be hoped) is the pleasure of finally getting to be with her bridegroom; finally sharing a dwelling together; finally living together ‘happily ever after!’

“The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, emphasis added).

Oh, let us look forward to that day – all the stresses of this life ended, all the family of God gathered together in one place, all the beauty we can imagine (and more), all our sins forever banished, and all of eternity to live in the presence of our Bridegroom, our Redeemer, our King, our Friend!  Praise God, in that day, “we shall always be with the Lord”!