by John Odhner

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"Ever after" has always been practically synonymous with true love. Even when the rest of this jaded world has despaired of or despised the possibility of eternal love, the poets, storytellers and all who are in true love have offered us glimpses of a love that endures all things, even death. Part of the wonder of knowing that genuine marriage is eternal is that it offers all kinds of people hope for the future. Those who have found their soul mate and united their lives in true love can not imagine or endure an eternity without the one they love above all. Heaven would not be heaven for them without true love.

People who are in a state of true married love look to eternity in their marriage because eternity is inherent in this love. Its eternity is owing to the fact that this love in the wife and wisdom in the husband grow to eternity, and as these grow or progress, the partners enter more and more deeply into the blessings of heaven (Swedenborg, Married Love 216).

On the other hand, those whose marriages have failed, or those who have not yet found one to whom they could pledge their eternal loyalty and love, may find in the hope of marriage after death the possibility of attaining a relationship deeper and happier than anything they have experienced here on earth. Though looking forward to and eternity of happiness and intimacy in the distant future is one of the benefits of believing in eternal love, there are more immediate benefits as well, because eternity is just as much a part of the present as it is of the future. Eternity, especially eternal love, is not an eternity of time, but it is what above and beyond time. We experience this when we are thinking from our right brains, or when we experience being in love. Then time has no meaning.

You may remember the story of Jacob, who worked seven years to win his love Rachel, and it seemed to him like only a few days. When we experience a state of love, we are not conscious of time, since we are living within the inner person (Swedenborg, Arcana Caelestia 3827). True love draws us away from bodily and worldly interests, away from time and lifts our minds towards heaven. Being in a heavenly state doesn't take us away from the present moment, but rather allows us to find what is eternal in the present moment. When those who are in the Divine think from what is present, they think also from what is eternal, because they think from the Lord. They say to themselves, What is that which is not eternal? Is not the temporal comparatively as nothing, and does it not also become nothing when it comes to an end? It is not so with what is eternal: that alone is, because its being has no end. To think this way while thinking from what is present is to think at the same time from what is eternal (Swedenborg, Divine Providence 59).

True love isn't just about living happily ever after, but having a piece of ever after in our daily lives. If married love is received from its Author, who is the Lord, it is accompanied by holiness from Him, which continually purges and purifies the love. If, then, a person has a desire and striving for it in his will, that love daily becomes more clean and pure to eternity (Married Love 71).