Marriage in Heaven

“In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her.” But Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” - Matthew 22:28-30

I had prettied myself up so often during interview season that I shunned heels and embraced hooded sweatshirts for a month after. Tonight I lingered again before the mirror in honor of a night out with D. Kohl running along eyelids; hair pressed straight and glossy, the steam wafting up in tribute to some unseen goddess of vanity. My apartment-mate clicked up the stairs, purse crooked in elbow: she who’d been in a long relationship, now out for a single girls’ night out; I who’d been single all my life, preening for a guy. Strange ironies.

We spend so much of our life dwelling on romantic relationships: defining, recovering from, dreaming of, maintaining, cultivating. Or maybe it’s just being in the February of our twenties, having forsaken tacky elementary-school valentines and benign college fellowship festivities. In the last week I’ve talked with girls figuring out which guys to give a chance, girls trying to pace relationships, heal from broken engagements, find their legs in a new marriage.

I used to really cherish the idea that in heaven, we’re not married. That feeling came back to me when I read that verse, a feeling as surprisingly freeing as it was alien. To think that one day, for all days, there will be no other. No being taken, no being given, just being. Me, God, here, now: it doesn’t get any more Real than this. That’s what it means. To think otherwise—to place our primary energy, hopes, and attention upon another person (or the absence thereof)—is to forget the Scriptures, which paint the greatest love story since the dawn of time, and promise the greatest consummated reunion that ever inspired a happily-ever-after. It is to forget the power of God, which both allures and commands the sort of worship that will define being and satisfy all other desires out of existence.

Alien, but freeing. Good reminder that the only constant in this life will go on being the only thing that matters for the eternity to which this life is merely the introduction.

Written February 11, 2006