In Uttar Pradesh’s Hamidpur village, Chandauli district, a groom abandoned his wedding midway because of an alleged food shortage at the venue. He later marries another woman that night. (India Today, 28 December 2024) The wedding was for the bridegroom and bride to be united to become a family, not just feasting. Paul writes that: Food for the stomach and stomach for food, God will destroy both. (I Corinthians 6:13)
Sacred Marriage: The function was to formally, legally, and publicly acknowledge that the man and the woman have come together to be united in the marriage covenant. The people, including the bridegroom, did not know the marriage’s purpose, meaning, and ceremony. They assumed it was just a party to eat and be merry.
Commitment: The wedding ceremony is to make a commitment to one another in the presence of relatives, the congregation, friends, and religious leaders. It is a public declaration of the beginning of a New Family. Feast, rituals, fun activities, and gifts are not the central aspect of the wedding, they are just enhancers at the margins.
Disposable spouse? The man who cancelled his wedding made food shortage an excuse and then went ahead to marry another woman within a short time. For him, a spouse is just a disposable property, not a person, that could be acquired or cast off at will.
Honor and hurt: With the mentality of entitlement, and pride in the cloak of honor, found this inadequacy in the arrangement as a hurt to their status. In that process, the bride’s life was almost extinguished, and her relatives’ lives were shattered.
Wedding at Cana: The Apostle writes about the wedding at Cana. Probably, the bridegroom had come to take the bride, where the wedding ceremony happened. There was a problem: the mandatory wine to serve as part of the meal ran out. (John 2:1-11) Mary brought the problem to the Lord Jesus Christ, who did a miracle of changing water into wine. A wedding without the Lord will always have inadequacies; only His presence brings wholeness.
Do I know the Lord who makes scarcity into surplus?