The Bride Price

I promised you more stories and parables from our wedding, so here is another.

My 87-year-old father was to accompany me up the steps and present me to John, my Bridegroom, so that John could hand him a velvet bag filled with five pieces of silver, in payment of the mohar or bride price. As we rehearsed this the day before the wedding, my dad's knees became very wobbly going up those steps, and I knew he was leaning heavily on my arm, trying to steady himself so he would not fall. That evening he wrote me a note and had my sister deliver it over to me. In his note he expressed his worry about falling on the steps, and asked if I would be willing to have him walk me just to the foot of the steps so John could come down and give him the bride price there.

Little did we know the picture we were now painting, as the Bridegroom descended down to pay the price for His Bride, in order to then bring her back up to live with Him! One person wrote to me, "I was so moved watching the Bridegroom, as my Messiah, coming down those steps, as if descending down to earth, to pay the price for His Bride! Then He brought you back up the steps and into the bridal chamber to dwell with Him!"

Again, it was something unplanned. It was changed at the last moment. And yet God, in His infinite wisdom, used it to share this beautiful illustration of His love and grace toward the Bride, the Wife of the Lamb! He had to come down among us to die - so that we might one day ascend up to Jerusalem to live with Him!

1 Peter 1:18-19: "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."