Beloved.

Hello friends! Hope y'all are well. :)

The band Tenth Avenue North has been recently uploading “video journals” to their YouTube, and it’s basically Mike (the lead singer) talking about Christianity.
Anyways, I was watching them last night, and one of them I’ve been thinking about a lot today. He was talking about their song “Beloved”, which talks about how in The Bible, Christ says we are His “bride”.
To be brutally honest, for my 15 years of living, I had NO idea what the flip that meant. Even recently, I didn’t understand what it meant. When I would read that reference in The Bible, I would just wonder like.. How guys felt about this? Why are we a bride? Wut?!?!
Time to break down the meaning, according to Mr. Donehey.
When a Jewish guy would want to marry a girl, back in Bible times, this is how it went down: The guy tells his dad. The guy’s dad, goes to the girls dad, and hashes all the “You trade camels for daughter”, yada yada yada. So when the guy asks the girl to marry him, there’s this big dinner, where all of the relatives come and blah blah blah. The guy sits the girl down, at the dinner, takes the special glass of wine, and says: “This is my covenant. Take and drink it.” and the girl can obviously say yes or no, so don’t think this whole hoopla is set up. So if the girls says yes, she drinks the wine, then the following happens: the guy and girl, between the time of the engagement and when they get married, they’re not allowed to see each other. So the best man, goes back and forth sending messages to either person. It’s like texting, with a dude. Anyways, so during this whole process, the guy and both families are building a house. Which is supposedly a “mansion”, but the Jewish translation of that is “apartment”. So yeah. Pretty small. And to boot, they add on to the guy’s house, so over the generations they would keep adding on. And while Extreme Makeover: Jewish Edition is going on, the girl, hears nothing about it. She doesn’t know when the house will be done. So every day, day in and out, the girl is thinking “today could be the day”. But the thing is, the guy doesn’t decide when the house is done. The father has to say when it’s cool. Then he says to go get’cha girl, and move on in. So when that day comes, the guy and his groomsmen come down the street with their ran’s horns and all that, making a big hoopla, so then they move in, and they’re married. Huzzah!
So…
This ringing any spiritual bells?
Let’s back up a little:
When Mike was explaining all this, he was talking about how Jesus, the night of the last supper, had been talking about this. He had taken the glass of wine, and He says: “This is my covenant. Take and drink it.” And for a bunch of Jewish guys, this is basically Jesus saying, “Will you marry me?”. And that was probably pretty confusing at the time. But now, time to make it a little less confusing:
We take the drink from His cup, we’re basically saying, “I do”.
So then He’s saying, “Look. I’m gonna go away for a while, but, I’m leaving my ‘best man’, the Holy Spirt, so we can keep in touch. I’m building this awesome mansion. It’s an expansion of My house, and it’s gonna be sweet. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen, but my Father does. And He knows when it’s cool to move in. And when we do, I’m gonna bring my possy, all the angels, and we’ll be playing those horns, then we’re going home.”
Take His cup. Drink from it. Wait. Then, He’s gonna come take you home.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,
-Allie.