A Marriage in Full

Also in the May, 2008, issue of First Things was an article by Gary A. Anderson about marriage, entitled "A Marriage in Full." It includes the following quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whose The Cost of Discipleship I am still reading):

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race until the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

and

It is not your love that sustains marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Anderson then goes on to discuss the Book of Ruth and its depiction of marriage, and he concludes with "The Book of Ruth tells us that within the sacred bond of marriage there lies a symbol of the love of God for humanity."