Sue Ellen agreed over the telephone to marry me.

She lived in Colorado. I was a poor college junior in Oklahoma. Two years earlier, we grew to know each other as volunteers at a Spanish Baptist mission in New Mexico, fell in love, then went our separate ways.

She brought me to my senses a year later, when she came to visit her sister at the same college I attended. We ended up spending a lot of time together, talking about the things that mattered to us. Hours after she left, I woke her dad in Colorado to ask if I could marry his daughter. He asked, “Which one?”

When I told him, “Sue Ellen,” he asked only, “Do you love her?” My “yes, sir,” satisfied him and he went back to sleep. So I called Sue Ellen as she was getting ready for work, 600 miles away, to ask her to share the rest of her life with me.

Of course, I didn’t have a ring to give her, no symbol of my adoration and commitment. She had no diamond for friends to notice, no rock to wave so they could exclaim, “Oh, Sue Ellen,you’re engaged!”

Her mother to this day says she never was engaged. Wearing no symbol, she had only my word…and sure knowledge of our mutual love.

A month later, at Thanksgiving, I saw her for the only time during our engagement. We picked out our plain gold wedding bands in a discount store and dreamed of our future.

In another month, we married at the mission in Española, N.M. Lack of an engagement symbol could not negate the reality of our marriage and of our waking in each other’s presence each morning.

Nor, does the world’s largest diamond guarantee the man who gave it will love you in the morning. Ask Marla Maples or Jennifer Anniston, or any number of women in lawyer’s offices filing for divorce.

After the Israelites had their tails kicked at Ebenezer (I Samuel 4) they sent men back to Shiloh to bring the Ark of the Covenant to camp. “When the ark of the Lord’s covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook.” (I Sam. 4:5)

Chin up everyone, God has arrived.

When the Philistines learned the Israelites had the Ark, the symbol of God’s presence, they trembled, remembering the power the Jewish God displayed against Egypt.

But the Philistines reasoned if they quit the fight they would be subject to the Jews, as the Jews had been to them, so they joined the battle. That day, Philistines killed 30,000 more Israelites, and captured the Ark.

Turned out, the Ark guaranteed neither God’s presence, nor His favor.

A few years later, Philistines have another Israelite army pinned down, hiding in their tents from a giant named Goliath. A young shepherd comes to bring some bread and cheese to his brothers in the army, and is embarrassed for them and their comrades because they cower before one man.

When David volunteers to fight the giant, King Saul puts his own armor on the boy, a symbol of authority and strength. Instead, the symbol is heavy and useless for the real battle and he sheds it.

David picks up five smooth stones from a creek bed as he trades trash talk with Goliath, telling him he will cut off his head “and the whole world will know there is a God in Israel.” He runs toward Goliath and drills the first stone into the giant’s forehead and drops him like pulpwood.

David dropped the symbols before he dropped Goliath and enjoyed the presence of God.

Israelite soldiers of the previous generation mistakenly thought the symbol was the Presence.

Sue Ellen never had a diamond, but we’ve enjoyed each other’s presence for 41 years.

In relationships, it’s not the token, it’s the trust.

In worship, it’s not the symbol, it’s the Presence.