On being hitched to Jesus

I was hanging out with a (fairly recently married) friend tonight, and we were talking about our relationships with our wives. In the course of that conversation he said something like, "I see every day now what it means when Christ calls the church his bride." I immediately thought about what an imperfect metaphor that was, because we are married to women who are at the very least our equals, while the perfect Christ is in a relationship with, well, all of us human losers. And then I stumbled into truth.

There is an aspect of the bride-bridegroom metaphor that I never really thought about before. That is, every human husband and wife are of equal worth before God. That's pretty clear, I hope. So when Jesus calls the church his bride, he is essentially stating that our worth is equal to his. I am just as valuable to God as Jesus.

That statement is almost outrageous. It doesn't match up with how I feel about myself and people in general compared to Jesus. But it does line up with what I know is true about God and Jesus and my relationship to him. It's truth, and it's one of those pieces of truth that transforms some piece of your consciousness and takes you to a higher place.