“Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other, but a call for two people to witness together to God’s love. . . . [The] intimacy of marriage itself is an intimacy that is based on the common participation in a love greater than the love two people can offer each other. The real mystery of marriage is not that [two people] love each other so much that they can find God in each other’s lives, but that God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminders of God’s divine presence. They are brought together, indeed, as two prayerful hands extended toward God and forming in this way a home for God in this world.

The same is true for friendship. Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes and are constantly impressed or enraptured by each other’s beauty, talents, and gifts, but it means that together we look at God, who calls us to God’s service” (Henri Nouwen).

The best relationships, whether marriage or friendships, are the ones that best reflect God’s love for His people. They aren’t generated out of a self-initiated kind of love but a love that is first from above, as in we love because God first loved us. We are lovable because God is love and showered His love on us when we were yet sinners and very unlovable.

I heard that the ideal marriage is not you and me in a perfect setting, i.e white picket fences and 2.5 kids, forever, but two people who have discovered that they can serve God better together than apart. Together, they mirror the love Christ has for His bride, the Church.

True friendships are the ones that make us more like Jesus and spur us on to pursue the things of God — and God above all — more and more the deeper the friendship gets. They never let us settle but always encourage, challenge, rebuke, and restore us to keep keeping our eyes on Jesus at all times in all places.

May we never stop seeking those kinds of marriages and friendships that are a display of God’s love and a witness to a watching world of how that kind of love can save and redeem.