Covenants and Promises
We have been talking for the past several weeks about the concepts of covenant and promise. On New Year’s Eve, Al Naab shared a sermon on this topic and we prayed Wesley’s Covenant Prayer together. Many of our scriptures this Lent are about God’s covenant promises and humanity’s response to them.
I’d like to share something a little different this month. Back in 2019, The Christian Century, a periodical to which I have subscribed since the 1990s, offered a writing prompt based on a single word, and accepted essays to be considered for publication. One of the first words was Promise. I wrote the following essay which was accepted for publication and is in the July 31, 2019 issue (https://www.christiancentury.org/article/readers-write/promise-essays-readers) Although it is a very personal essay, I hope that it will be helpful to some of you as it explores the concept of a marriage covenant and what happens when it is broken. If further conversation would be helpful, please reach out.
And remember
Fear Not
Pastor Dianne
We got married in the church where I was baptized and confirmed, and where we led the youth group every Sunday. It was my 23rd birthday. We promised “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until we are parted by death.” We had started dating the October of my freshman year. He was a senior physics major, worked on the school suicide hotline, lived in the same coed fraternity. We read Leo Buscaglia and Carl Rogers. We liked to golf and camp.
We got our degrees and moved to Chicago. I became a consulting engineer while he did his postdoc and then became an assistant professor. We joined a church, he sang in the choir, we went to Bible study together and worked with the youth.
We had three miscarriages, and then a stillborn baby boy. I discerned my call to ministry, and he brought me home an application for the University of Chicago Divinity School. Five high risk pregnancies later, we had three beautiful children. He made dinner and took care of the kids so I could complete my degree at Garrett Evangelical, just two miles from our house.
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