There is something strangely hopeful about giving a new Bible to a couple at the beginning of their marriage. Your story has only just begun. And yet we place in your hands, a Book that already knows how it ends.
That is one reason we want you to have it.
You are beginning a life whose chapters are still blank. God has already written all your days in His book. Some of your chapters will be so lovely, that you will wish to live them twice. There will be chapters you would gladly tear up by the pages, if heaven would allow it. You may not know which is which until you turn the page.
May this fresh, clean Bible in your hands remain beside you both. If is does, something curious will happen over the years. You will begin reading passages you thought you knew, and discover that they had been waiting for you to become old enough, or wounded enough, or thankful enough, to truly find them.
Psalm 23 sounds one way at twenty-two. It will sound quite different at eighty-five. “Children are an heritage of the LORD”, will read differently if little feet ever run through your home. “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another” is pretty to admire. It becomes altogether different at eleven-thirty at night when somebody must say, “Please forgive me.” “Cast thy burden upon the LORD”, has a nectar that will remain hidden, until you actually have a burden too heavy to carry.
That is the wonder of this Book is, the words remain constant. We are the ones who keep arriving at them.
Year after year, providence will bring you to texts that were waiting for you. Somewhere in this Bible there are words you will one day need, and do not know it now. Somewhere in this Bible there are words you have only lightly valued, but one day will find them priceless. You cannot know these verses today. They are waiting for you in the future.
We usually give young couples the things we think they’ll need. A Bible is given for the life only God knows they will have. It is ready for your future joy. It is ready for your sorrow. It is ready for your sin. And ready for your holiness.
And if the Lord gives you fifty years, may this Bible look very different from the one I am holding now. May the spine be worn from opening. May the pages be wrinkled within. May there be handwriting in the margins, dates beside promises, names beside prayers. Perhaps a verse underlined because God once met you there. We read this together when we thought we could not go on. And you did go on. Grace carried you.
This Book has every text you will ever need. And every word eventually gathers around Jesus Christ.
May God keep speaking. And by grace, may you keep listening.
On behalf of your church family and consistory,
Pastor J. Lewis