I love weddings. Many pastors share horror stories of bridezillas gone nuclear. I choose to focus on those occasions upon which God was smiling. This past weekend was one such instance. 

     I was granted the privilege of officiating the wedding of my youngest son’s best friend. The nuptial was held on a fall day beside the waters of the Hocking River. The temperature was seventy degrees. The sun was shining. The trees were filled with dazzling colors. No sanctuary has been decorated so magnificently.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,

but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion,

“Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged”  (Matthew 7:1, CEB).

     Charlie is my pal. He meets me at the fence between our properties. Charlie is a seventy-pound Goldendoodle. He greets me each day with an enthusiastic woof and tail waggle.

“You may say to yourselves, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?’ But do not be afraid of them…” (Deuteronomy 7:17-18, NIV).

     “The ache for home lives in all of us,” Maya Angelou once wrote. Likewise, the home of our youth is not as large as we reminisce. Both of these maxims were at play yesterday as my wife and I visited the house where she was raised.

20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does

not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they

have not seen.  21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also

love their brother and sister” 

(1 John 4:20-21, NIV)

“ So encourage each other to build each other up, just as you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11, TLB).