Tomorrow is the wedding of our son Micah and his bride Nicole. They met in Alaska two years ago, when he was the guy who harnessed tourists up to a zip line that hurled you a hundred yards over the trees, and she was poised at the finish to snap your eyes wide portrait.

Micah had gone to Alaska hoping to see the Northern Lights, but in his six months there he never did. That does not mean they weren't there.

I watched a three minute time lapse video of some extravagant displays of aurora borealis. The waves of color swam across the horizon like constellations come to life. Great green bears, and undulating hydras ambled as if they were globe trotting. I wonder if it is fun to be that stunning.

Most people are oblivious to what happens at the top of the world, either because they are asleep, or looking at their phones, or live at the wrong latitude. Yet the dancing lights continue with only the arctic fox to witness.

Last week I was at church with my twins. Sitting nearby was a couple in their eighties. Perhaps they were remembering their own years of buttoning young children for church, and teaching them prayers. But today they sat peacefully, holding wrinkled hands while the musicians serenaded us. 

There was a sphere around the couple, one that I'll wager they could not see. Their love was large, and it radiated around them rather like an aura. I squinted my eyes and wondered what they looked like, before life had flung them across the landscape of their sixty years together. 

Tomorrow I will squint my eyes as I look at Micah and Nicole, and try to picture them as octogenarians, holding wrinkled hands no longer strong enough to zip line. And I will snap their picture.