On the day of my wedding I wore a floor length veil. It draped behind me just like the table cloths I’d wrapped around myself as a little girl playing dress up. Following our ceremony, Tucker and I stood at the entryway greeting our guests when my beloved groom stepped on my veil and ripped a gaping hole in it, a few feet wide. Everyone else had kept a safe distance so as to not step on dress or veil, but this man I’d just joined my life with kept much closer proximity. I didn’t know this moment was speaking a word of promise to me. 

In our 9 years of marriage, my husband has ripped through every veil that existed between us. Everything that was separate before, is now joined to him. We’ve become one. The veil separating him from my heart and his presence, my finances and his presence, my hopes, dreams, health, plans, privacy, intimacy, nature, temper, weakness, and strength, was torn through. In time the tearing, like a river cuts through rock, has reconfigured the landscape of my heart. 

Likewise, Christ the bridegroom put a nail pierced foot upon the veil that separated who we are from all he is. And like a river cuts through rock, he washes over the landscape of our souls, rendering a new terrain he names his Kingdom. He spoke his vows, “it is finished,” and tectonic shifted my life towards himself. And in close proximity I stand, veil torn through, eternally rib to rib with the firstborn of new creation. This is the wonder of the cross: that Christ the bridegroom has come close to his bride (the Church), and the veil of separation has been torn asunder. 

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split…” Matthew 27:50-51

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. Rev. 19:7