The Right Day and Time to Be Married

By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Considering When the Moment is Right to Tie the Knot

Howdy!

Today’s portion from the Directory of Public Worship has us asking questions about timing. Both in the sense of when you should get married and how long you should (or should not) wait between engagement and the actual service. Like some of the other topics we have covered in the marriage part of the DPW it is an interesting thing for the writers of a document hoping to regulate our practices as Christians to be concerned about. We can understand things like who we should be marrying, and what the service itself is to look like, but why is there a whole paragraph given over to the date and elapse of time, as well as why it probably should not be Sunday? It is a good question to ask and we’ll spend most of our space today trying to answering it. We can rest in the fact that they would not have put it in here unless it mattered. The writers of the DPW are not super focused on being rule makers and wish to leave as much to providence and local wisdom as they can. When they do mention something, it is worth our time to honor their wish and give space to meditating on what they have to teach us about these matters.

Here is today’s portion of the DPW:

After the purpose or contract of marriage hath been thus published, the marriage is not to be long deferred. Therefore the minister, having had convenient warning, and nothing being objected to hinder it, is publickly to solemnize it in the place appointed by authority for publick worship, before a competent number of credible witnesses, at some convenient hour of the day, at any time of the year, except on a day of publick humiliation. And we advise that it be not on the Lord’s day.

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