Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in ‘A Wedding Sermon From A Prison Cell’ written seventeen days before he was hung by the Nazis on April 9th 1945, less than a week before the Allied armies reached the camp – wrote,
‘Marriage is more than your love for each other… 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, and 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… Thank him for it; thank him for leading you thus far; ask him to establish your marriage, to confirm it, sanctify it, and preserve it. So your marriage will be ‘for the praise of His glory.’
*See attached Outline