The attendants are standing in place. The audience is silent. The minister speaks. Please join hands and repeat after me. I, James, take you, Susan . . .
Expectation moves into reality through the exchanging of vows.
By repeating vows and signing the license, a man and woman enter into a covenant relationship that embodies all that God intended for marriage. Exchanged vows also anticipate those times of married life that are always more than we bargained for. The covenant anticipates those experiences of life in which marriage, with its unexpected twists and turns, reaches deeper, becomes more absorbing, and pulls more out of us than we ever anticipated. And when they do, we can go back again and again to the promises we made to one another. So then, they are no longer two but one flesh.