Getting Ready for the Big Day!
The preparation of the Bride of Christ
Everyone asks it: What is life all about? Some seek meaning in wealth, travel, fame, or causes that “change the world.” Others embrace the absurd.
It’s the question that quite literally is on everyone’s mind.
People spend their entire lives trying to answer it. They search until their bodies grow weary from searching.
If there is one single question that the church must answer, this is it.
Unfortunately, most of our religious leaders simply avoid the question. When they do answer, it is often something about overcoming sin, sharing the good news, or doing good works.
While those are all good things, I don’t believe they are the reason for our being.
In the mystical tradition of following Jesus, there is one clear answer: life is about preparing for the future glory — the union of the Bride and the Bridegroom at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Ancient Symbols
Jesus Himself gave us the imagery to understand this. At the Last Supper, He drew from the Jewish wedding tradition — using its most intimate symbols to explain what was happening between God and His people. The symbols he used were powerful descriptions of something that was happening between God and His people. If we don’t know the relevance of the symbols, it can be difficult to understand what God was doing.
The Betrothal Cup
In the custom of the time, a groom and his family would negotiate the terms of a marriage contract, including the bride-price (mohar). He would then recite a blessing over the cup, and offer it to the bride in a public ceremony. He would say, “I offer you this cup as a new covenant”. If she drank, it was a public sign that she accepted the proposal and entered into the covenant.
When Jesus lifted the cup at the Last Supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20), He was doing more than instituting a memorial meal. He was speaking in the language of the Bridegroom.
By offering the cup, He was extending the covenant proposal to His disciples — and through them, to all who would believe. When we accept His cup, we enter into the covenant of betrothal. When He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20), He was doing more than instituting a memorial meal. He was speaking in the language of the Bridegroom.
By offering the cup, He was extending the covenant proposal to His disciples — and through them, to all who would believe. When we accept His cup, we enter into the covenant of betrothal.
The Groom’s Departure
In the Jewish tradition, once the bride had accepted the cup, the groom would leave her for a season to prepare a place — often an additional room built onto his father’s house. This time apart was not absence for absence’s sake — it was purposeful. He was making ready the home where they would live together after the wedding feast.
“2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14: 2-3)
During this period, the bride would remain in her father’s house, preparing herself for her husband’s return — sewing garments, learning household management, and keeping watch for the unexpected moment when he would arrive to take her to the feast.
Like the Jewish bride, we now live in the in-between time:
The marriage is sealed — the covenant is real, binding, and eternal.
The Groom has gone to prepare a place (John 14:2–3).
We prepare ourselves for His return — not by anxious striving, but by becoming like Him through the work of His Spirit.
This is the heart of Christian mysticism’s bridal imagery: we are already His, yet we are still waiting for the fullness of union. The engagement is not a “maybe” — it is a guarantee. And every day of our waiting is part of the preparation for the joy to come.
How do we Prepare?
We live now in the betrothal season. The covenant is sealed, the Groom has gone to prepare a place, and our calling is to prepare ourselves. But what does that preparation look like?
In the betrothal period of a Jewish wedding, the bride’s task was not to build the house, gather the guests, or arrange the feast. Her task was to prepare herself — to live each day in a way that honored her beloved, kept her heart ready, and allowed her love to deepen.
Christian mysticism sees the season we are in — between Christ’s first coming and His return — in much the same way. We are the Bride, living in preparation for the wedding feast of the Lamb. And that preparation is not primarily about doing more, but about becoming more.
Paul’s language for this is transformation:
“And we all… are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Cor. 3:18)
The bridal life is a life of becoming like Christ — a likeness formed not by frantic effort, but by a surrendered relationship. The process can be understood in three simple but profound movements: knowing, reckoning, and yielding.
Knowing
Before the Bride can prepare, she must know her Beloved — not just know about Him, but know Him in the intimacy of relationship.
In Romans 6, Paul begins by asking, “Do you not know…?” — a reminder that transformation begins with truth received into the heart.
Knowing who Christ is.
Knowing what He has done.
Knowing who you are now in Him.
This “knowing” is not an intellectual checklist. It is the kind of knowledge that changes the way you see the world and yourself.
The Bride knows she is loved, chosen, and secured by a covenant that cannot be broken.
Without this knowing, preparation becomes legalistic performance. With it, preparation becomes joyful anticipation.
Reckoning
Paul continues in Romans 6:11, “So you also must reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
“Reckoning” is not wishful thinking; it is accounting — counting something as true because it is true.
If you know Christ has united Himself to you, you reckon yourself united to Him.
If you know His death broke sin’s power, you reckon yourself free.
If you know He lives in you, you reckon yourself alive to God.
This is the Bride putting on her wedding garment in her mind and heart — living as if the wedding day is already certain, because it is.
Reckoning is the bridge between knowing and living. It’s how the truths of faith stop being distant theology and become present reality.
Yielding
Finally, Paul writes,
“Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.” (Romans 6:13)
This is yielding — offering yourself fully to Christ, moment by moment, without reserve.
For the Bride, yielding is not passivity; it is active consent to be loved and changed. It is the posture that says:
“I am Yours — shape me into what pleases You.”
In mystical terms, yielding is the surrender of the will into the hands of the Beloved. It is Mary’s “Let it be to me according to your word” lived out daily.
To prepare for Christ’s coming is not to frantically “do” enough to be ready, but to be made ready.
It is not to prove your worthiness, but to live in the truth of His worthiness.
The mystic knows:
Actions flow from identity.
Identity flows from union with Christ.
Death of Ego
And yet, this preparation involves a deep and sometimes painful process — the death of the ego.
The false self, with its grasping for control, recognition, and self-importance, must give way to the true self, hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).
This is why transformation is not about accumulating spiritual “achievements.” It is about losing the self that cannot inherit the kingdom, so that what is eternal in you — what is already joined to Christ — can live and breathe freely.
C.S. Lewis captures this in The Great Divorce, when the travelers from the “grey town” must release what they cling to most — even if it feels like losing their very selves — in order to step into the solid, radiant country of God’s presence.
Many resist because they cannot imagine joy without their old identities and desires. But those who yield find that the surrender is not the end of themselves, but the beginning of their true selves.
So it is with the Bride.
We are not simply “getting better” over time; we are being remade. Every letting go of pride, resentment, or self-will is a stitch in the wedding garment. Every surrender is a step into the likeness of Christ.
Preparation, then, is less about external activity and more about becoming who you already are in Him.
It is being conformed to His image until the day the Bridegroom returns and finds you radiant — not in the glory you’ve built for yourself, but in the glory He has built within you.
Conclusion: Becoming Like Christ
Knowing, reckoning, and yielding are not three separate boxes to check — they are movements in a single process of transformation.
Knowing opens your eyes to truth.
Reckoning anchors your life in that truth.
Yielding allows that truth to reshape you from the inside out.
And this reshaping is the work of the Spirit, not the product of our striving.
The Bride does not manufacture her beauty — she receives it as the Beloved clothes her in “fine linen, bright and clean” (Rev. 19:8).
So, what is life all about? For the Bride, it is this: to take the cup, to say yes to the proposal, and to spend every breath becoming ready for the day when the Groom returns. The rest — achievements, happiness, even noble causes — find their place only if they serve that preparation.
Reflection Prompt: What part of the false self still clings for recognition, control, or self-importance, and how might you lay it down so the true self in Christ can live freely.
A Prayer of Preparation
“I remain here, in the in-between,
where each thread of my garment is a surrender,
each stitch a death to what is false.
When You come,
may You find me radiant —
not in the glory I have gathered,
but in the glory You have made in me.”
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