Simple Joys

This weekend we are at the wedding of my cousin's daughter, Sarah. She is getting married in Cornwall so it is a long way for us to travel. We are breaking our journey at Taunton, making the rest of the trip on Saturday morning.

I was thinking how much weddings figure in the Scriptures. Of course, the first recorded miracle of Jesus was at a wedding: Jesus himself is referred to as a bridegroom and the Church as the 'Bride of Christ', and apocalyptic writings talk to us of 'the wedding feast of the Lamb. Whenever, weddings are mentioned in Scripture they are nearly always associated with fun and rejoicing. I wonder how much of that fun is lost in the recent phenomenon of having bigger and better weddings. Some of the popular venues here in Liverpool cost between five and ten thousand pounds - and that is just the venue. Add to this the dress, the catering, cars, flowers and all the other paraphernalia that goes with a modern wedding and I can see why some people say that a good wedding costs over twenty thousand pounds It is as if to have fun we have to spend more and more money. It seems to me that twenty thousand would make a good deposit on a house.

I don't believe I'm an old killjoy - of course a wedding will cost money- even Jesus had to step in when the organisers of a wedding underestimated the amount of wine required. What I am saying is that fun and rejoicing does not have to cost a lot of money. When we look back on life, often the times we remember enjoying ourselves the most are those times when we did not spend an absolute fortune. I believe we all need to become more childlike and get back to some of the simple pleasure we enjoyed in those early years of discovery.