My Bride

This morning during prayer time, I read about my bride.

Today's readings were wonderful for me.  As we read about the descendants of Levi, the heritage of that house of Israel, and the descendants who fulfilled it, I found myself praying for my own children, and celebrating before the Lord the heritage He has given in their wonderful little lives.  I prayed for them individually, praised God for them, and proceeded to read the rest of the day's Scriptures.  As I journeyed through, I came to Proverbs 19:14... and the face of my bride filled my mind.

"House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord." (Prov. 19:14, NASB)

I waited many years for Penny, because I had from an early age discerned God's calling on my life into the clergy.  I had read from my earliest days about the paths of the Lord's clergy, and of the Bible's standards of a Godly wife.  In the end, I had determined from the time of my youth either to find that person whom God had set aside to work with me, live along side of me, and celebrate life together, praying that He had prepared just such a woman, or to live out my days in this temporal life in the sole intimate companionship of the Lord.  The day I met her, my soul jumped with fireworks.  A woman of beauty, of joy, of strength, and as the Proverbs said today, of prudence, or understanding, stood before me and suddenly worked along side of me!

Far beyond the blessings of this world, are the blessings of a good wife; and such are the blessings which God has attended unto me.

May my children, and their children to them be so blessed, and may the blessings of my God be visited continuously upon the bride who fulfills the heart of my youth and the joy of my grey.

Pax Christi,

John