Prayer
Holy Source of all that is Good and Beautiful,
Today we celebrate your Love and Grace so obviously present in the lives of Scott and Valentin.
Thank you that we are able to gather here in this time and place to fully affirm their love as good and beautiful.
Bless us. Bless them so that we all may live lives of love and grace.
May each of our lives also be a source of that which is good and beautiful.
Amen.
Charge
This is pretty amazing, isn’t it? We are all pleasantly surprised to find ourselves standing here in Lamar County Texas witnessing these particular marriage vows. Valentin and Scott, I will sign your marriage license and you will file it with the County Clerk and you will be legally married. That’s pretty wonderful. But we’ve talked about - even as grand as that legal reality is - it is still only a contract; you can break it or even make it null and void.
So this ceremony that you have chosen does more than witness a legal contract. You have asked me, a minister of the gospel and a spiritual counselor, to stand here with you in order to remind you that your promises to each other are more binding than any contractual agreement. The vows you will make today are covenant promises of love made in the Presence and by the Grace of the Source of All Love.
There are some wonderful words in the Christian Scriptures about love. They come from First Corinthians 13.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not
envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
Note that this description does not talk about how love feels. Some days you will not feel warm and fuzzy toward each other as you do today. Some days you may even be tempted to walk away from this relationship. Because marriage is hard. It may be the hardest thing we ever do.
So these words remind us that, no matter how we feel on any given day, in a relationship of love we choose to act with loving acts, we choose to live with loving attitudes. We develop habits of patience and kindness and humility. We make commitments to bear with one another and to believe in one another and to constantly live in the assurance of hope that we are better together than we ever could be apart.
This kind of love only comes from the Holy Source of All Love and when you live in love like this, when your marriage is based on love like this, no one can ever justly say your relationship is not holy and sacred.
Yes, marriage is hard work, but it’s some of the most mysteriously beautiful work we ever do.
The Promises
I take you to be my husband.
I promise before God and these witnesses to be
your loving and faithful husband,
in plenty and in want;
in joy and in sorrow;
in sickness and in health;
as long as we both shall live.
The Rings
I give you this ring
as a symbol of the covenant between us
and as a reminder of my great love for you.
The Pronouncement of Marriage
It is with great joy that I pronounce – as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the authority of the State of Texas and because of the wisdom of the United States Constitution - that you are now married.
Congratulations Scott and Valentin Bell-Fleitas
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