Living Reminders of God's Divine Presence

Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other, but a call for two people to witness together to God's love.... [The] intimacy of marriage itself is an intimacy that is based on the common participation in a love greater than the love two people can offer each other. The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can find God in each other's lives, but that God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminders of God's divine presence. They are brought together, indeed, as two prayerful hands extended toward God and forming in this way a home for God in this world.

The same is true for friendship. Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes and are constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it means that together we look at him who calls us to his service.

--Henri Nouwen, from Clowning in Rome

Jana shared this Nouwen quote a few months back on Facebook. We very much liked the perspective on marriage, how our marriage works best when we become living reminders of God's divine presence for each other.

But we also loved the connection to friendship, and I think it's a great vision of what church should be: a broken and diverse group of people who come together to do the hard relational work of becoming living reminders of God's love for us.