Continuing from Bruce C. Hafen and a previous post ‘A Hirelings Contract or a Shepherd’s Covenant’:
In addition, the term covenant marriage also carries echos of the ancient Old Testament pattern of “covenant,” which gave high and sacred meaning to the religious covenant-making performed in a “shrine or shared place” and was accompanied by a sacred oath intended to yield divine blessings or cursings based on obedience to the oath. 3
Covenant marriage can also have a more general meaning. People of other faiths can approach their marriage with the sense of wholehearted reciprocity that creates the attitudes and commitments of a covenant marriage. When they do, their relationship, their family, and society will be richly blessed, even if they do not yet enjoy the eternal fulness of a celestial marriage.
Even a Church member who marries in the temple but approaches his or her marriage as a “contract” partner rather than a “covenant” partner is not really living a covenant marriage. Those of the half-hearted commitment are, by definition not of those who “overcome by faith, and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:53). Hence their marriage will be neither eternal nor celestial in duration or quality.
How soon does opposition come to test the covenant assumptions, and does it even come to temple marriage? Warning or the opposition that faced the Saints in building Holy Temples, Brigham Young said that we never undertake to build a temple but what the very bells of hell begin to ring.4 And as soon as temple wedding bells begin to ring, so will ring the bells of hell.
The way new couples approach their rough spots, small or large, really does depend on whether they expect that they’ve made a contract or a covenant. As God first established it, marriage was, by this nature a covenant, not a commercial-style contract one may cancel and pay the damages when the going gets tough. And our commitment to a real covenant can be tested with the earliest of irritations.
For instance Matt took Lisa on a horseback ride, excited at the novelty of his plan to offer her an engagement ring that was under some secret flowers he had tied to a tree some miles away. Then Lisa’s horse took a tumble, she hurt her hip and the clever trip was over. Matt had to propose as Lisa sat happily but tenderly on her bruises, far from the flowers.
Another couple I know had several hundred engagements photos printed, only to discover the photographer had printed the wrong picture and there was no time print again before the invitations had to be mailed. I watched them decide, after working hard to resolve their differing opinions to just use the wrong picture rather than demand an overnight reprinting job.
I remember that the groom at the Idaho Falls temple who was so lost in bliss during a photo session that he didn’t realize he was standing on the hem of his bride’s white dress, mashing it into he muddy grass. That night they stood bravely through the reception, concealing as best they could the little smudge that symbolized that their real life journey had begun.
These are samples of the mildest and the earliest tests. The bigger ones come later. ~~~ Bruce C. Hafen, Covenants Hearts—Marriage and the Joy of Human Love (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), p.77-79 (See “A Hirelings Contract of a Shepherds Covenant III)
