A Marriage is an agreement. It is a contract that has no promise of success in the venture. Adam and Eve lived together--in a perfect, new creation, they lived together--and even there, walking with God, knowing God as they didn't, though intimate their knowledge, they still blew it.
The marriage at Canna of Galilee says more about the agreement of Marriage than anything else I know. Christ turned the water to wine. Marriage, every year of it, is water. That is all it is. And it is essential for this earth and for our bodies to have water.
But water is tasteless and free and may become polluted in the environment, as the Prince of the Power of This World wars to destroy this planet God gave to men and women. If a miracle is not done by the Messiah Emmanuel, the young ancient Jesus, at the urging of a mother who knew the ravaging, safe prospects of "water only" in a Marriage; if the water is NOT turned to wine, there may be long life, but there will most likely be little joy.
Fruit, and not merely that of the womb when the water breaks through children, our finest hours, must be liquid. Tangible to our senses, easy in the mouths, make-able in our barrels, growable in our vineyards, serve-able in our Loving, else marriage is mirage. Two may be a natural spring, a Fountain of Youth, but if there is not wine between them--their waters as wine--their lives will remain outside of them, an Act of God, a beautiful, created resource of water only, that may be bottled and sold in emergencies.
A Marriage is not a baby. A baby will grow to adapt to being a human. A Marriage may or may not adapt to being a vineyard, if that is the cost of proving that "water" can be physically vested, grown, worked into barrels and aged to eventually show Wine.
Don't we men and women want the miracle instead? The water turned to a heady, sweet pairing of our senses and sensibilities, instead of cheap whine in the barrels? A Marriage is far more complex than a miracle. It is an agreement to work and stay. A miracle, though, is the stuff of holy writ--an entering of God.
Posted by nancy at May 7, 2009 10:56 AM