Tip for Tuesday: Wedding Prayer

Sorry, I'm on a wedding vein this week.  I continued to think about the wedding on Sunday, and they included a prayer I've heard at many of my friends' weddings.  The first time I heard it was at my friend Ashley's wedding (find her blog here), still one of the best I've ever been to.  I knew from the first time I heard it, I had to have it in my wedding, too.  


We found it online, and Dad made a couple adjustments to it. Those adjustments aren't reflected here, but I think there was some kind of theological wording issue.  Regardless, it remains, in my opinion, one of the best prayers I've ever heard period, and completely perfect for a wedding.


So here's the tip: getting married?  Know someone who is getting married?  Consider this prayer, or even get crafty and put it on a frame or something lovely like that!


Enjoy!

The Puritan's Prayer for Marriage:

"Father in heaven, thank you for this husband-wife commitment to Christian marriage. As they look ahead, we pray that their future will never lack the convictions that make a marriage strong. 

Bless this husband. Bless him as provider and protector. Sustain him in all the pressures that come with the task of stewarding a family. May his strength be his wife’s boast and pride, and may he so live that his wife may find in him the haven for which the heart of a woman truly longs. 

Bless this wife. Give her a tenderness that makes her great. A deep sense of understanding and a strong faith in you. Give her that inner beauty of soul that never fades, that eternal youth that is found in holding fast to the things that never age. May she so live that her husband may be pleased to reverence her in the shrine of his own heart. 

Teach them that marriage is not living for each other—it is two people uniting and joining hands to serve you. Give them a great spiritual purpose in life. May they seek first your kingdom and your righteousness knowing that you will sustain them thru all of life’s challenges. 

May they minimize each other’s weaknesses and be swift to praise and magnify each other’s strengths so that they might view each other thru a lover’s kind and patient eyes. Give them a little something to forgive each day that their love might learn to be longsuffering. 

Bless them and develop their character as they walk together with you. Give them enough hurts to keep them human, enough failures to keep their hands clenched tightly in yours and enough success to make them sure they walk with you throughout all of their life. 

May they never take each other’s love for granted but always experience that breathless wonder that exclaims, “Out of all the world, you have chosen me!” Then when life is done and the sun is setting, may they be found then as now, still hand in hand, still very proud, still thanking you for each other. 

May they travel together as friends and lovers, brother and sister, husband and wife, father and mother, and as servants of Christ until he shall return, or until that day when one shall lay the other in the arms of God. We ask through Jesus Christ, the great lover of our souls.

Amen."

xoxo, A