Most people think of love simply as a feeling you have for someone. For them, it’s a good, warm, romantic, sentimental feeling. I’m in favor of good feelings, but there is a problem: feelings are undependable and uncontrollable. You can’t decide how you’re going to feel – you just feel. Consequently, many of the people who think of love in such terms fall out of love as quickly as they fall into it. Their love is undependable. Marriage is too important to be built upon a foundation so shaky.

The Apostle Paul doesn’t think of love in such terms at all. He writes about a tough, durable kind of love, a love that keeps on loving no matter what. That understanding of love is so important to marriage, because only those able to love one another unconditionally will be able to live together happily as husband and wife. That’s why, in just a few moments, I will ask the two of you to pledge your unconditional love for one another.

But first, I want to remind you that love is more than a feeling. I know that what you are feeling for one another at this moment is beautiful. And, all of us here, your family and your friends, consider it to be a special privilege to share in the beauty of this moment with you. But I hope you will understand when I say that there will be times in your marriage when you will not feel about one another exactly as you do just now. There will be times in your marriage when you will not like each other very much - and that’s normal. There is no-one in the whole world you can feel good about all the time!

So, when those times come in your marriage, as they will, I hope you will stop and remember that love is more than feelings. Love that has grown up to maturity is first of all a commitment, a commitment to be together as husband and wife from now on, no matter what. It’s a commitment that is unconditional. Mature love is also a decision – a decision to act lovingly even when you don’t feel loving – maybe especially when you don’t feel loving!

Of course, the source of such love is God. God loves us with a love that never wavers, a love that is unconditional, and then He asks us to pass that love along to one another. I’m quite sure that, of all God’s gifts to us, the greatest gift of all is the gift of love. Amen.