Yesterday, we talked about gifting a body to science and natural question from your cremation

article.

The most unexpected follow-up question from your cremation article is on Wedding Summer

from here in Minnesota, right now to ask this to your pastor, John, in your recent article

on cremation, you wrote, quote, pastors should lead the way in cultivating a church ethos

where expensive funerals and weddings are not the norm, end quote.

This is something I hadn't given much thought to you before and really appreciated, thank

you.

I was hoping you could speak more directly on the topic of expensive weddings.

How can we design a Christ-exalting, simple wedding?

I will have a plea to couples in a minute for courage to be countercultural in this regard

because that's what it's going to take.

But I'm mainly pleading with pastors in that article to take the initiative to teach

and preach and help in the church to build a culture of simplicity in the church that

makes the focus of marriage celebrations, the Lord Jesus, the Christ-exalting meaning

of marriage, the awesome importance of the vows, the preciousness of the people, the

lovers, and not the clothing, the flowers, the location, the music, the whole production

that can make the actual act of God in marriage seem like an incidental prelude to the big

fancy party afterwards, sad, I think.

But of course, this is not an attack on joy, just the opposite.

It's a plea for drinking from the deepest pools of joy, not the peripheral puddles of happiness.

Besides, godly poor people, godly poor people regularly have more joy than rich people.

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