Written on a card attached to one of our wedding gifts (a butter dish if I remember correctly!), was the sentence “Enjoy the adventure!” That written note has stayed with us since we first read it and in good times, bad times and confusing times we have often repeated “it’s all part of the adventure!”

When any of us are on an adventure, whether its as a child playing in our imaginary world, or as adults travelling through a country we’ve never visited before, there will be moments of pure joy but also unexpected bumps in the road. Things we didn’t see coming. And we except that reality because we know that’s exactly what an adventure is meant to be. The Bible says, “you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen in your life tomorrow…you are merely a vapor that is visible for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14 AMP). Life…and marriage is surely an adventure, we cannot see the road ahead. But no matter what happens, we are in it together. On our wedding day we gifted each other our love and commitment and we promised to honour, respect, and cherish one another for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. We are in it together, we are unified, we are committed.

My Pastor recently spoke on Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12, the passage which is often referred to at weddings and which says, “two are better than one”. Yes, this can be applied to marriage, but it can also be applied to each and every one of our relationships, and even to the Church too. The examples of marriage around me that I most admire are ones characterised by “we’re in this together, it’s all part of the adventure”. They are the couples who have been through so much yet have not lost their love for living life or for one another. In a world which says it’s okay to throw out or leave behind what is broken, I ask, what if we worked at it and fixed it? What if as the Church we had the attitude and perspective of “we are in this together, it’s all part of the adventure”? What if we loved each other as Christ first loved us and gave Himself for us? Oh, what a beautiful example to the world around us we would be. And what an adventure to be enjoyed!

By Hannah Arnold