It is wedding season once again. In fact, according to one source, 76% of all weddings in the U.S. take place between May and October every year. I am currently engaged to officiate four weddings over the next year, and they all fall in that time frame. People are once again getting engaged and married after a hiatus during and for a couple of years after COVID. It is good to see that people are finding love and are being led to commit to another person – it’s good for them and it’s good for society.

Becoming engaged to another person brings with it the promise to love that person exclusively and to begin to seriously plan a life with them. This is a major step and requires a fair amount of courage to enact. Afterall, none of us who have ever become engaged have had any inkling of what the future would throw at us as individuals and as a committed couple. We learn over time that the love that was initially so overwhelming, mellowed and deepened into an abiding presence in our lives.

Engaging for a lifetime with another human who doesn’t interpret the world the same way I do (thankfully) and who has different opinions and dreams is not for the faint of heart. One has to commit every day to the other person, be forgiving of their idiosyncrasies, to seek forgiveness ourselves for our faults and mistakes, and learn to love in an unconditional way.

Loving unconditionally is what God models for each of us. God never abandons us and always loves us perfectly and constantly. We humans, when we are functioning at our best, endeavor to do the same toward other humans.

However, we need help to learn how to love deeply, consistently and well. To learn how to do that, we must engage with holy scripture and participate actively in community building. The problem is that so many people, even those who regularly attend a faith community, are rarely engaged at a significant level. I was talking to a dear friend about this last week, and he marveled at how people who attended his bible study/devotional time would read Bible passages but would never engage with them to see what it might mean for their lives.

The blessed assurance we have as beloved children of God is that God is always seeking to engage with us on a deeper level. When challenging people and situations crop up in our lives, God is there to work through them with us. God wants to be engaged with us always and seems to want nothing more than our loving engagement in return. When we do engage with God on a deeper level, we discover that there is so much more that God offers us than we usually experience. Engaging with God helps us to grow in our faith and in our loving engagement with the world. This deepening love affair then continues to bless us as we become a blessing to others.

You may be one of the billions of people worldwide who have faith in a power greater than themselves – who follow the God of their understanding. Yet, you may be keeping yourself on the sidelines, not ever really engaging in seeking a deeper relationship with God and other humans. You may attend a faith community somewhat regularly, but it doesn’t take much to get you to stay home. You keep God and faith community members at arm’s length where you can control what happens with the relationships.

Yet, that’s not what love is all about. As any engaged couple will tell you, they are so in love that they can’t help but want to be in an everdeepening relationship with their chosen person. Loving God and other humans in a faith community can be like that too. We can fall in love with them so deeply that we just want to be with them as often as we can. This week, if you are looking to engage in a loving relationship with God and other people, I invite you to attend a faith community – or to commit to getting more engaged in the one you already attend.

You will discover blessings beyond number if you do.

Blessings for your journey!

The Rev. Albrant is pastor of Mineral and Mount Pleasant United Methodist churches.