Thursday, January 8, 2009

Marriage Psalm… (Psalm 45) 080109

In recent times, I have been involved in the lives of a number of couples who are getting married. And I have also been reflecting and evaluating upon my own marriage lately; there are ups and downs, there are gives and takes, and there are tears and flowers. Marriage is a mystery, people getting into it thinking they know everything about it, only to find out later that they know nothing about it. I am very blessed by Gary Thomas’ book: Scared Marriage, which helps me to give my marriage reality check and most importantly drawing me back to a God-Centered perspective of marriage.
Today’s Psalm is about a wedding. It is about the wedding of the son of David, composed by some Levitical priests in celebration of their king’s son wedding. It is like a wedding song of those days. This song is also a reflection of Christ, being the Son of the Most High King and the church being the bride. It is Psalm of inference to God and His majesty and splendor (v3). This is a Messianic Psalm, a Psalm that points Jews to a Messiah who will be like the son of David. This is a Psalm of hope, because when the Jews were in exile; this Psalm reminded them of the Messiah and the hope of glory and deliverance God had promised. This is their vision.
Indeed, Christ came, not only as a warrior and deliverer, but also as a Lover and Groom. In His second coming, He will receive His people, the church as His bride, and this Psalm can be sung again with its fullest of meaning.
This Psalm in its literal structure tells us that it is addressing two groups of people: The king (v2-5) about the glory of the bridegroom (v6-9) and the bride (v10-12) about the glory of her (v13-15).
We are the bride; we need to be reminded of the glory of the bride which God has installed for us. We are marrying to the Son of the King. Though we might be once from the foreign land (v12), but we are being included into His Kingdom by His grace of accepting us for who we are. Such marriage, we are undeserving; but God in His grace receives us with love and clothes us with all the glory and splendor. This is also true to our earthly marriage.
In a marriage or in any relationship; we often attempt to change the other party to the person whom we want him or her to become. But God want us to love the other party the way He has made Him to be. In marriage counseling, I often come across the following issues between couples: unmet expectation, disappointment, and anger. These three are definitely related and the list can go on and on. We can re-adjust our expectation and learn to manage our disappointment and deal with our anger; but the bottom-line is to have God-centered marriage according to Gary Thomas.
In a marriage, we tend to be either self-centered or spouse-centered. We either expect the other party to fulfill his or her duty and responsibility to satisfy our needs, or we idolize our spouse so much that we cannot recognize the person in the mirror when we look into it in the morning. A God-centered marriage focuses on God and accepting His will and plan for us. And also this will lead us to be able to claim a marriage which is describe in today’s Psalm; glorious.
I know I am too young to talk about marriage, and my marriage is still far from being glorious; but I want to claim upon this promise and this hope. I want to embrace the glorious future for my marriage, by not being self-centered or spouse-centered; but being God-centered.
Your marriage may be good and you are enjoying every moment of it now, or you are facing some roadblocks in your marriage and relationship. I invite you to do some reality check, and claim this Psalm into your marriage and relationship. Christ is the perfect groom and the future church will be the perfect bride. Let us claim and work towards such beautiful picture of marriage. I will pray with you and journey along with you as long as you willing to allow me to.

HHS…
Abel…

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