Remembering...

As I was praying this morning a thought came to me. It is not unusual for me to get these thoughts while praying and it seems to be how God speaks to me at times.

The thought was this: Early in our marriage, and until only a few years ago really, I would often reminisce in my head about how Sharon and I got together. It was really a romantic story which I may get into at another time. Suffice to say right now I realized that I wasn't going "there" as much as I used to. Now and then I would visit the scenes of my memory and how excited I was to have someone in my life that loved me as much as I loved her. It was also exciting to be able to go through the courtship rituals, the dating, the planning of the "sure-thing" engagement. Remembering those times would remind me of how fortunate I was to have this beautiful woman in my life. But lately I was not going back to those videos of my mind. And I realized this morning that I didn't need to. The past is important and now and then we must remember and celebrate what started the great romantic journey. But the truth is, now and the future have become more important. Now and the future, more "now" than future, is where I live. I look at Sharon and I don't see the girl from my "past" fairytale, I see the woman of my present marriage. I no longer think, "how did I get here" but "isn't great to be here?" There is security in the love that has grown and developed over the years, the history that has been shared, the time invested in another person. And I don't feel I need to revisit the romantic dream to appreciate where I am at with Sharon right now.

Now the theology in this is quite something. The Cross is the most important historical event that ever was and ever will be on this earth. It was at the Cross that Jesus showed his incredible love for you and me and began the divine romance on our end. When we need to remind ourselves of the length and depth and breadth of God's love for us all we need to do is look at the Cross. We visit this scene in our minds when we doubt our salvation or God's affection for us; we celebrate it in communion; we rehearse the steps at Easter. And yet there is the same growth as in a marriage relationship whereby we do not need to go to the Cross in the same way as when we were first saved. There is time spent with Jesus. There are memories of the things accomplished together in the Spirit since that day. There are answered prayers, an assurance that we have been heard and answered. It is not that we don't need to visit the Cross memory to recall what Jesus did, but we don't need to reinvent our salvation to feel what Jesus means to us. We remember the divine romance of our first love with Jesus but now we live in the present and the future of a secure relationship that is based on so much more.

Maybe that's obvious. Maybe we just need to see it and say it. Well, there it is.