What’s the worst that could happen?

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

In the days leading up to Annesley’s wedding, the “worst case” scenarios were practically all I heard:  A wedding dress destroyed by a red wine-sloshing guest. A caterer who left the dinner plates outside in a snowstorm. Chinese lion dancers run amok, towering over the bride and groom in a loud and somewhat sensual frenzy. (They’d been hired as a “fun surprise” by the MOB, since the newlyweds were Beijing-bound.  Surprise!)

None of these stories worried me. I mean, short of being left at the altar, most wedding whoopsies are not really that bad.

Yeah, well. About that.

Annesley and Geoff were, technically, left at the altar. But let’s look on the bright side. They were not alone. They had each other. And their four siblings.

I’ll spare you the details (partly because I’m not really sure what all went down, but mostly because I am currently incubating in a sort of post-traumatic numbness that God must reserve for MOBs who live through these things), but somewhere amid the post-ceremony photo flurry, everyone left. The locals left in their cars. The out-of-towners left on the shuttle busses. The wedding party got on their bus, popped the champagne, and congratulated themselves on a mission accomplished!

Even Robbie and I left, scampering to our car so as to beat the happy couple to the reception.

Imagine our surprise, a few minutes later, when the cell phone rang and it was our daughter, Virginia:  “The wedding shuttle isn’t where you said it would be. I think they left us. We are all alone. And Geoff just told Annesley to get back in the church. No bride, he said, should be standing on the curb of Pacific Avenue in a giant white dress, looking for a ride.”

(Geoff had a point.)

Thank goodness for my mom and John, who’d hung back to spy on the proceedings and were just getting into their car when they picked up the distress signal. Grabbing his iPhone, John began filming, even as he tried to shoehorn all six adult kids into his back seat. Robbie and I showed up in time to extract the bride and groom, but the siblings had already piled in. John peeled out of the parking lot, taking selfies the whole way (“Smile kids! When are you gonna have a story like this again?”), while Hillary urged him to “Just drive!” and Geoff’s brother Matt sat there wondering what he had done to deserve our family (and feeling certain that it didn’t really matter because, as he told me later, “I was pretty sure we were all gonna die”).

Worst case wedding pic

And all of that was before the reception.

But hey, I’m sure nobody noticed the torn wedding dress (we “fixed” it with about 18 staples and a couple of huge binder clips), the girl-fight over the bouquet (those photos are gonna be priceless), or the fact that the band didn’t come back to the stage for the second set (I found ’em watching the NBA Playoffs on the bar TV).

The list goes on. And you know what? It was GREAT.

And you know what else? God knew it would be. He knows what it’s like to throw a wedding – and to have things go awry. He specializes in worst case scenarios.

Think about it.  The Bible says that the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding where the invited guests don’t come, where they have to fill the banquet hall with street people, and where an inappropriately dressed guest gets ejected. God knows all about receptions where they run out of wine, or fuel for the lanterns. And what about the truly worst-case wedding whoopsie, back in Genesis 29, when the groom wakes up in morning married to the wrong gal?  Now there’s a wedding surprise.

Maybe it’s the old misery-and-company thing, but I started reading up on all of these Bible weddings and, truth be told, the only wedding where everything goes right is Christ’s. We can read the party recap in Revelation 19:  The onlookers’ cheers sound like thunder, the bride is dressed to perfection, and the whole thing just smacks of utter, limitless joy.

And the best part about this wedding?  The bride is us! 

It’s true. When we fall in love with Jesus, he gets rid of our ragged clothes. He dresses us in beautiful robes. And he changes our name from “Deserted” to one that means “My Delight” (Isaiah 62). Weddings just don’t get any better than that.

Sure, Annesley’s big day wasn’t perfect, but I’ll tell you this:  It gave me a whole new appreciation for the way God feels about us.  After seeing Geoff’s face when he spotted Annesley coming up the wedding aisle, I will never read Isaiah 62:5 the same way. I hope you’ll read these words with me today and know that, all worst-case whoopsies aside, you are utterly, incredibly loved:

As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.

❤️

Annesley and Geoff (eventually) made it to the reception, arriving by boat. Nobody even noticed that they were a teensy bit tardy! So if you’re planning a wedding–and some bride or her mom needs to hear this–remember that things will go wrong. But it will be beautiful! God will rejoice–and he’ll give you a good story to tell!

Annesley and Geoff wedding pic

 

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Why God Could Take a Good Selfie

My friend Nancy invited me to join her at the She Speaks conference, put on by Lysa Terkhurst and her pals at Proverbs 31 Ministries. The conference was uplifting and informative (www.shespeaksconference.com, if you want to go), particularly for old gals like me, who don’t know a lot of what we don’t know when it comes to things like “driving people to your website.” (Seriously? As a recently minted empty nester, the last thing I want to do is start driving people again!)

Eager to drink from the fire hose of digital information, I parked myself in a series of sessions about things like analytics, maximizing traffic, and creating a “strategic pinning plan.” (Pinterest, as it turns out, is not just a place where people show what they can do with a glue gun and a cheese grater. Who knew?)

(Well, you probably did. Maybe everyone does. But it was news to me.)

After three or four of these workshops, I felt like a dinosaur. Or maybe a platypus, swimming in a sea of cute young girls, all of whom seemed to have websites and followers and “highly pin-able content.” I was just about to slip out of my seat and go in search of some comfort with my new BFF, the conference center barista, when Nancy tugged at my arm. “I want to get a quick picture of the two of us,” she said, fishing in her purse for her iPhone.

“Here,” she said, handing the phone to a stranger. “Will you take a selfie of us?”

(You can’t make this stuff up.  I love Nancy.)

And I love selfies—the kind that you actually take yourself. They are such a photographic enigma—almost nobody looks good in a selfie, but everyone looks happy. And which would you rather be? Attractive, or happy? (Maybe don’t answer that. Or at least think about it for a sec, before you do.)

And I bet God loves selfies too. You wanna know why? Because—and I just read this today, so it’s fresh—he has long arms! Back in Exodus 11, when Moses wasn’t sure the Lord could deliver on the whole “Where’s the meat?” thing, God had just one question for him: Is the Lord’s arm too short?

Long arms, as everyone knows, are the key to a good selfie. It’s hard to get everyone in the photo if you are built like a crocodile. But God can get the whole world in his pic! And his arms are not just long…they are strong (Psalm 89:13), everlasting (Deuteronomy 33:27), and always ready to gather us close (Isaiah 40:11).

Next time you get ready to take a selfie—or to hand your camera to someone else to snap it for you—remember God’s arms. No matter what you need, it’s within his reach. No matter how heavy your burden is, his arms are always there, underneath. And no matter how far away you may stray, he stands ready, with arms open wide, to welcome you home.

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