A Bride Adorned

“How do you feel?” I ask.

Her smile and the sparkle in her eye are answer enough, but her words strike me.

“I feel great,” she says. “As light as air.”

And an image fills my mind, the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Coming down out of heaven. As light as air.

She’s beautiful and brilliant, gifted and clever, cheerful, outgoing, tender and generous. She knows what she wants and she goes for it.

And what does she want?

She wants to love, serve, honor, and glorify her God.

Her purity is a rebuke to the spirit of this age, and I grieve for what we, the church, have lost. We’ve believed a lie, and many of us have been robbed. The whisper hisses that the Bible is outdated and holiness is bondage, and why would you deny yourself? The fruit is good, and you crave it. Why wait? The whisper hisses, and some of us listen. We demand our inheritance early, and we stumble hard before we finally come to ourselves in the far country, bruised, bleeding, and ashamed.

Or maybe we never come to ourselves at all. We make excuses for conformity and broad brush our sin with a warped version of grace that masks without healing, a festering wound we pretend we can’t feel. And the burden weighs us down, whether we know it or not.

The bride Jesus is coming for will be pure and spotless, a “holy city,” and yet I look at this fractured, limping church, and it’s hard not to wonder. Will we really be freed from all our baggage? Chains broken, cages opened, hearts undivided, our idols and our crowns cast at His feet?

Even in the asking, I know the answer is yes. Yes! Our God is a redeemer. He takes the bruised and broken and makes them whole. This is our hope and the hope we offer a wounded world. And this is good news indeed.

But this bride adorned, she teaches me that there’s even better news. Her life shouts it from the house tops, a beacon to those who haven’t yet tasted forbidden fruit. “You can bypass the pig sty,” she says. “You can choose wisdom and holiness in spite of the world’s empty promises and the mocking scorn of this present age. The Bible is not outdated. It is timeless and the only way to true freedom. God is good in all that He gives and in all that He forbids. If He withholds the fruit you crave, it is only that He might give you an abundant feast beyond your wildest imagination.”

Her life declares this truth. Her joy underscores it. A bride adorned for her husband. Pure. Set apart.

She comes to him without fear.
She comes to him without shame.
She comes to him without baggage.

As light as air.

Giving thanks in community (#310 – 326):

a much-loved nephew and his radiant bride
unalloyed joy
this expanding family
God’s timing
His always-good plans
the promise of wisdom
the mystery of prayer
the wonder of communion
the glory of love
beauty, taking my breath away
golden leaves dancing with a playful wind
sparrows seen
my father’s tenderness
my mother’s smile
Advent lessons and carols
(The Humble Bold CD is now available in addition to MP3s)
art with purpose

{I feel the need to slip this in here. If you read this post and thought, “It’s too late for me. I’ve blown it and there’s no point in pursuing purity now,” then I ask you to please watch this video, and be assured that you are precious and loved, and it’s never too late to bring your brokenness to Him and exchange it for His beauty. Grace, peace, and redeeming love to you.}