It was nice to be at Yew Khuen & Jo-Ann’s garden wedding last weekend (the most different wedding I conducted was on a beach! So this is the most unique venue I attended thus far!) I liked the Beatle Wedding car … cool and counter-cultural?!
I found the two readings very moving … the first was an excerpt from “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams and the second was read so meaningfully by Jo-Ann’s sister from The Gospel according to John 15:12-17. I found myself giggling when I was listening to the first reading and felt the words opening me up to appreciate the “truths” conveyed there and when the second reading was done … I found the words of Jesus settling deeply in me … drawing me deeper to what’s REAL in Christ!
Just read the following words aloud … starting with the excerpt …
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
pause …
“12”This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant[b] does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” ~ John 15:12-17 (English Standard Version)
the Kit Family wishes both of you — the new Mr. & Mrs. Yoon — a wonderful adventure together with God’s blessing, grace and wisdom …
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