{"id":1059,"date":"2014-12-02T07:05:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T15:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insideout.insidewp.test\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2021-07-07T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T21:27:09","slug":"glimpses-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/2014\/12\/02\/glimpses-glory\/","title":{"rendered":"A Church, A School, and A Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heidi and I decided to get married in a vineyard\u2014an active winery that makes quality wine. The sermon of the wedding ceremony included some messaging around Jesus\u2019 very first miracle of turning water into wine and we participated in our very first communion together as a married couple\u2014in front of a whole “host of witnesses.”<\/p>\n

During our dating and engagement, there were\u00a0two\u00a0important groups we found ourselves connected to most of the time\u2014our church and our school. Although there was much happiness and joy, both communities also had experienced some significant brokenness and sadness. Our church had just recently gone through a \u201csplit\u201d and our school was going through some difficult personnel changes that were not pretty. In short\u2014there was pain and there was hurt.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t overthink the decision to invite everyone in our church to our wedding\u2014we just did it. We didn’t overthink inviting a large percentage of our school community (mostly staff)\u2014we just did it.<\/p>\n

What happened over the course of the four to six hours that constituted our wedding day (ceremony, dinner, and dancing), I believe was completely God ordained\u2014and solidified my faith in a God who gives us glimpses of His Glory<\/em><\/span> to call us closer to Him. That wedding day\u2014our wedding day\u2014we experienced this.<\/p>\n

As a couple of broken communities, we partook in a feast together. We sat down together at the table and put aside our issues. Yes, there were certainly issues, but we parked them at the door (or at the trellis) and we laughed, we cried, we ate good food, and we sat outside in the beauty of God\u2019s creation and we experienced the pureness of God\u2019s goodness. <\/strong><\/span>We then transitioned into a night of dancing and we all danced together, often with each other and more often in large groups\u2014and we laughed some more. Of course, by and large, Heidi and I were mostly thinking about ourselves, especially me (we were newlyweds after all!), and we did have a fun time even though not all of it was completely perfect. But we were mostly oblivious to the glimpse of Glory<\/em><\/span> that I had mentioned above. God uses earthly experiences to grant us glimpses of His Glory<\/em><\/span> and coming to a feast is one of those experiences, which is why “The Table” or “The \"julius-and-heidi\"Feast” is an important biblical metaphor that carries important messaging \u00a0we continue to experience in our everyday lives. He desires us and our communities to be whole, but our sin messes this up. We all long for wholeness and when we get these glimpses\u2026it draws us closer to Him.<\/p>\n

Heidi and I had the opportunity recently to celebrate a special anniversary (15 years) and we reminisced a little bit about that day\u2026but we also took stock in our lives today\u2026and we did this over the breaking of bread and wine, because it helps us experience just a little more\u00a0glimpses of His Glory<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heidi and I decided to get married in a vineyard\u2014an active winery that makes quality wine. The sermon of the wedding ceremony included some messaging around Jesus\u2019 very first miracle of turning water into wine and we participated in our very first communion together as a married couple\u2014in front of a whole “host of witnesses.” […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":1070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,15],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrating","category-faith","category-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}