There and Back Again

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After dinner last night, I came across a journal entry I wrote on October 20th of last year. Today was the Lord’s Day, it began—one of many that I have spent at Jared’s church.

On that particular Sunday in autumn, we had read a Psalm on the drive to church; he’d set the thermostats while I played the piano; he preached a good sermon; we ate pizza at Simple Simon’s with the church members; we talked with the kiddos at the table (and those who’d climbed under it); we took a scenic drive through the countryside and saw the whirling fans of the long chicken houses; we went home and returned to church that evening to do much of it again. The sun, which had run out from its chamber that morning, now returned to its rest over the dozing pastures.

The things is, I could have written this journal entry just a few weeks ago, because our Sundays tend to take the same shape. Jared and I will be married this year, when our Lord’s Day will likely follow the same pattern week after week, month upon month.

This reminds me of the book of Acts, which I’ve buried myself in over the last year. For a book of the Bible that we usually credit for The Strange, The Supernatural, and The Extraordinary, Acts has some rather ordinary patterns folded into it. When you take it slowly, minding the pauses between events, you realize that the apostles often spent long periods of time in one place. Over and again, Paul himself returned to a city and remained there “no little time with the disciples” (Acts 14:28). 

This is a settling reality for someone about to be married. When I try to look up the path to what this year might hold, I see one thing against the horizon, like a stretching body of water: Newness. There is truth to this, of course, as marriage is a profound mystery the Great Author dreamed into existence—a country I have never traveled. 

But marrying Jared and moving to Arkansas will, for me, simply be returning to a place I’ve been dozens of times already and remaining there. It’ll require me to fall into step with the old, ordinary patterns of a new life: to read a Psalm, drive to church, play piano, greet the saints, share a buffet, go home, traverse there and back again. 

Paul was an evangelist to new people, and he was also a discipler of old ones. He didn’t leave new converts to flounder like a newborn calf with shaking legs, but often spent months in their cities and synagogues, strengthening their faith. Even when church life turned ugly and stones were hurled at him, Paul returned to the cities who hated him most, “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

When I think about it, what is marriage itself but a faithful returning and remaining? Each day, I will return to the same person as the day before, and whatever storm or snow or shipwreck that befalls us, I will remain with him. I’ll stay put, and so will he. Years will pass, and still, we’ll return to each other, remaining under the shelter of our covenant, and reminding each other that through many tribulations-–or even the steady ho-hum of good, ordinary days—we will, at last, enter the kingdom of God.

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“The meeting [of love] is prepared in the long day, in the work of years, in the keeping of faith, in kindness.”

~ Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

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