What is the most important legacy you can leave your children?  Most Christians would immediately say that building a strong Christian faith is the highest priority.  But if there were just one more value that you could instill in the hearts of your children, it should be the meaning and vision for marriage.

Remember when kids went to weddings?  No wonder young children, even those raised in the Church, lack a basic understanding of marriage.  By-gone church weddings have been replaced by today’s pricey adult affairs. The popular wedding site The Knot encourages brides to “stand strong” and “limit the guest list” and warns, “Don’t extend ‘ceremony only’ invitations to children.” Martha Stewart’s wedding etiquette agrees that inviting children is “not appropriate” at most weddings. (What? … really!?) When asked “who has been to a wedding?” very few elementary school children’s hands go up. The occasional “yes” will then reveal that it was “my mom’s” or “my dad’s” wedding. While marriage has become irrelevant to the post modern millennial generation, today’s Generation Alpha kids will be left completely adrift with no real understanding of the concept.

As a sexual abstinence educator for over 25 years, I’m convinced that if we are going to ask our kids to wait for marriage to have sex, then we’d darn well better show them that marriage is something worth waiting for.  God’s design, His purpose, and His very heartbeat is revealed in the sacred vows of marriage.  To understand a wedding is to glimpse into God’s love of His Bride, the Church.  The lifetime pledge of a husband to his wife sheds new light on the eternal covenant God makes with His people.  Without a vision for marriage, sex has no context, purity has no meaning, and we leave the next generation without the picture of God’s covenantal love.

Oh, yeah…today’s hike was fun.  I love being married to Tom Scheuring.