“Marriage is more than your love for each other. … 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. …
So love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
