Blog | Subscribe | Free Trial | Contact Us | Cart | Donate | Planned Giving
Log In | Search
facebook
rss
twitter
  • CURRENT
    • Winter 2025 PDF
    • WINTER 2025 HTML
    • THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW HTML COLLECTION PAGE
    • NEWSworthy: What’s Happening and What It Means to You
    • Blog
    • Pastoral Reflections
    • About Us
  • DINNER
    • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2024: NEW MEDIA ADDED!
    • Great Defender of Life 50th Anniversary Dinner Ticket 2024
    • Great Defender of Life 50th Anniversary Dinner TABLE for TEN Ticket 2024
    • Great Defender of Life 2024 Young Adult / Pregnancy Center Staffer Tickets
    • HOST COMMITTEE Great Defender of Life Dinner 2024
    • DINNER JOURNAL ADVERTISING 2024
    • ARCHIVE: GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2023
  • ARCHIVE
    • Archive Spotlight
    • ISSUES IN HTML FORMAT
  • LEGACY
    • Planned Giving: Wills, Trusts, and Gifts of Stock
  • SHOP
    • Your Cart: Shipping is ALWAYS Free!

A Pastor's Reflection

0 Comment

The Lord’s Hand in Marriage

Rev. W. Ross Blackburn
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

 

You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married (Isaiah 62:4).

The beauty of the Gospel is perhaps nowhere more stunning than in these verses. To a rebellious, sin-weary nation, the Lord doesn’t just promise salvation. He asks for her hand in marriage.

More often than not, abortion follows sexual sin. Abortion also often follows abandonment, when a woman is either left to herself, or pressured into having the child killed. For many, forsaken and desolate are words that are hauntingly descriptive of many women who have given themselves completely to another, and then been abandoned precisely in their time of greatest need. The reason sexual sin is so devastating is that, in the end, it is about having been known, and then forsaken.

The beauty of the above verses is not just that the Gospel is what we need, but it is also what we want. The reason that we are so disordered and confused sexually in our culture is that, in the end, we want the kind of intimacy of which sex is an expression and a part.  We want marriage. And behind the desire for marriage is a desire for God, who created us to live in intimacy with Him, to know and be known. This is exactly why, in the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus reveals his glory by taking the place of the bridegroom at a wedding. The lost and broken, the forsaken and desolate become Christ’s bride. This is the gospel.

Which is very good news to all, but perhaps in a very particular way to the woman who has been abandoned in her vulnerability. Having been known and forsaken, the Gospel says that the Lord who made her loves her, delights in her, and wants to marry her.  Shame does not just go away, and the pain of rejection does not disappear on its own. It is healed when one is not only accepted, but wanted by the One who, knowing who we are, seeks her hand.

 

Feature Main Page
A Pastor’s Reflections

 

188 people have visited this page. 1 have visited this page today.

Social Share

  • google-share

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Comments will not be posted until approved by a moderator in an effort to prevent spam and off-topic responses.

*
*

captcha *

Get the Human Life Review

subscribe to HLR
The-Human-Life-Foundation
DONATE TODAY!

Recent Posts

RFK Jr, Autism, Eugenics--and Pro-Life Silence?

09 May 2025

IVF: The Frozen Sleep Evading Time

07 May 2025

Report: "The Abortion Pill Harms Women"

05 May 2025

CURRENT ISSUE

Alexandra DeSanctis Anne Conlon Anne Hendershott Bernadette Patel Brian Caulfield Christopher White Clarke D. Forsythe Colleen O’Hara Connie Marshner David Mills David Poecking David Quinn Diane Moriarty Dr. Donald DeMarco Edward Mechmann Edward Short Ellen Wilson Fielding Fr. Gerald E. Murray George McKenna Helen Alvaré Jacqueline O’Hara Jane Sarah Jason Morgan Joe Bissonnette John Grondelski Kristan Hawkins Madeline Fry Schultz Maria McFadden Maffucci Marvin Olasky Mary Meehan Mary Rose Somarriba Matt Lamb Nat Hentoff Nicholas Frankovich Peter Pavia Rev. George G. Brooks Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth Rev. W. Ross Blackburn Stephen Vincent Tara Jernigan Ursula Hennessey Victor Lee Austin Vincenzina Santoro Wesley J. Smith William Murchison

Shop 7 Weeks Coffee--the Pro-Life Coffee Company!
Support 7 Weeks Coffee AND the Human Life Foundation!
  • Issues
  • Human Life Foundation Blog
  • About Us
  • Free Trial Issue
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Planned Giving
  • Annual Human Life Foundation Dinner

Follow Us On Twitter

Follow @HumanLifeReview

Find Us On Facebook

Human Life Review/Foundation

Search our Website

Contact Information

The Human Life Foundation, Inc.
The Human Life Review
271 Madison Avenue, Room 1005
New York, New York 10016
(212) 685-5210

Copyright (c) The Human Life Foundation.