By Frank King

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.”  James 2:23-24

 “And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” Revelation 19:9

 “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

 I, Frank, take you Susan, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward, until death do us part.

 In his book The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters, Jeffrey Zaslow chronicles events that took place at Becker’s Bridal Shoppe in Fowler, Michigan.

The store has been owned by the same family for four generations, and one hundred thousand brides over nearly eight decades, have planned their weddings there.

In a recent Wall Street Journal radio interview[i] recorded in January 2012, Mr. Zaslow describes the Magic Room, where the bride first sees herself in her wedding gown. He describes the mirror at the end of the room, the same mirror that has been there since 1934, and he speaks in awe at realizing that all one hundred thousand brides over the last 78 years have seen their reflection in that same mirror.

He then speculates that there is a connection, unbroken from the first bride in 1934 to the latest one in 2012. These women were all connected by a common image: their first view of themselves as a bride, usually accompanied by their mothers.

He even speculated whether his three daughters might be added to this long line of brides, and might see themselves in that same glass someday.

I can imagine a progression of those images, flickering several per second in the mirror, as a slide show on fast forward may look. Each bride radiant, each hopeful and joyous, each seeing herself for the first time in the last dress she will wear before saying the vows and becoming Mrs.

This is the dress she will wear, accompanied by her father, walking down that aisle, her adoring groom awaiting her at the altar. During his interview, Mr. Zaslow emotionally projected himself to a future date when he would walk his daughters down the aisle. I heard both hope and sadness in his voice as he pre-lived those fateful moments.

Through his words I began to picture generations of brides checking and checking again to make sure that in every way, and from every angle, they are perfect for the groom’s first viewing. Is the hair just right? Does the skirt fall perfectly?

Is the veil a perfect accessory, neither drawing attention to itself, nor being lost in the grandeur of the gown?

And there, behind each, in the bride’s blind spot stands a mother. A helper who is observing from an angle that the bride cannot. Checking the train and the back of the dress, and ensuring that the hair is as perfect in the back as it is in the front.

Mr. Zaslow then laments that, unfortunately, not all of those brides remain married today.

Sometime between this joyous reflection and their future, they all faced the down-side of the vows they took.

They all had days that were “worse.” They all suffered from the “poorer,” the “sickness,” and not all continued to love and cherish, nor made it “till death do we part.”  

Some did make it to the finish line of life still married. Some are still with their “lawfully wedded spouse.”

Those are the ones who took the vow seriously, and allowed none of the challenges of life to deter them from fulfillment of the covenant. They and their grooms returned to their wedding vows to get them through the dips in their wedded bliss.

In a sense, they returned to that mirror, checking their original commitments, and making sure they were still ready for the walk.

The disciple James tells us in his epistle that we have such a mirror available to us.

It, too, reflects innumerable  images, each dressed in wedding garments for the first time. Each radiant, each hopeful, each joyous. Each seeing himself or herself for the first time in the gown to be worn at the great wedding supper depicted for us in Revelation 19:9.

He tells us that this mirror is the Word of God, and it is that reflection which keeps us going through the dips in our salvation bliss. We are preserved by remembrance of that reflection, and by returning to that mirror.

Just as the bride checks and checks again to make sure she is perfect for the groom, we should continually check our reflections in the mirror of the Word.

And just as the mothers and fathers mentioned in Mr. Zaslow’s interview had roles in the bride’s preparation and in her walk to the groom, we as parents have specific roles in our children’s journey to the wedding supper.

We check our child’s blind spot, making sure that the view from behind is as perfect as the one reflected to the child. Is he just putting up a front in children’s church, or does he really believe that God’s Word is true?

Does she truly want to serve God, or does she just want to be seen up front, acting super-spiritual?

Parents can see what the child cannot, and lovingly guide that person from being a child of the couple to being a child of the King.

At each “bad reflection,” the parent’s job is to gently  guide the child toward becoming a godly adult. The parent stands beside the child as he or she looks in the mirror. At younger ages the parent evaluates and tells the child what is reflected, and how to adjust behavior toward a godly lifestyle.

As the child matures, the parents allow this evaluation to be done by the child, the parent correcting when needed and affirming when accurate.

The goal is this: That the child learns self-correction based on the Word of God, and becomes a Christian whose position is one of relationship with the groom, Jesus. Those who learn well will finish well, serving Jesus till death and into eternity.

A parent walks a child down the aisle to the spouse awaiting the union, both figuratively and literally. Proverbs 22:6 tells us that we walk our child “in the way he should go,” down that narrow aisle that leads to Jesus.

We also prepare our children to become spouses of their future mates. A father shows a daughter what to expect in a godly man, and shows his son how to be a godly man.

A mother patterns the “good wife” that her daughter soon will become, and trains her son in how to act respectfully toward a woman.

To be honest, we must consider the prodigal parent or child who doesn’t keep that vow.

What of those who stray, and allow the worse, the poorer, the sickness to wear them down until they consider divorcing themselves from the Holy Groom?

Although they may consider dissolution of the covenant, Jesus will never consider it. He is married “until death,” and will continually seek out those who are lost. He will come back for us and our lost children and keep coming back desirous of our return to his covenant.

Although we may break our word, God cannot and will not break His. It is not His will that we become as the disappointed bride who forgot (or was forgotten in) her covenant. Although we may stray, Jesus never does.

If we do our job and our kids do theirs we will have and hold Jesus, even beyond death, and He will have and hold us, and our children will join Jesus and us at that Great Wedding Supper.

A final note: Dateline Detroit, Saturday, February 11th 2012.

“Jeffrey Zaslow, the West Bloomfield, Mich.-based author…was killed Friday in a car accident in Northern Michigan. Zaslow said the love he had for his daughters – Jordan, 22, Alex, 20 and Eden, 16 – was the inspiration for The Magic Room.” [ii]

Mr. Zaslow’s children no longer have the opportunity to be guided by his love, but your children do.

[i] [i] “WSJTM says Goodbye to a Friend” (Wall Street Journal This Morning, Feb 13, 2012) Online podcast

[ii] “Giffords Book Co-author Killed in Crash” (Arizona Daily Star, Saturday, February 11, 2012) p A19