On our walk tonight in our town, Alison and I find ourselves at the brick courtyard hidden between historic buildings and a downtown church. We know this place well and are glad to see it open to passersby again. We enter its quiet seclusion.

Our oldest son and his bride, years ago, took wedding photos here. So, we send a photo to them, to see if they remember. Not surprisingly, they do.

For weeks, I’ve been looking for a visual to accompany what I’ve been learning about God’s jealousy. This is perfect. I’ll take a table for two.

Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Ex. 34:4

Jealousy is a tricky concept. We have, in our modern minds, no positive version of the word. We think of an angry, unreasonable or controlling husband or wife. And though the Hebrew word for jealous has at its root the image of becoming intensely red, as in the rising heat of emotions, God is not motivated by a desire to control, but to bless.

He is passionate to protect the relationship of love he has with his covenant people.

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) is quite helpful in this. He writes of that love:

He demands all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength; for this very reason he calls himself our spouse, and our souls his spouses…

…that perfect love, namely, love which has gone as far as zeal, cannot suffer any mediation, interposition, or mingling of any other thing.

I pull up a chair from a nearby table, to represent that “interposition” -- those things in my life that lure me away from devotion to Christ. Most often, they are the very blessings God gives me to deepen our love, only I – like a child opening birthday presents – fixate on the gifts and not the giver.

Last week, I lost my voice the day before I was to give an important talk to an international conference of fellows scribes – a talk I had been looking forward to for six months. In my desperate prayers, I realized I needed to seek his face, not what might be in his hand. (He did, in the end, give me just enough voice to get through.)

I lay the “other love” chair down on the ground. My thought is to represent our rejection of it. It strikes me how appropriately like a skeleton it looks, for those other loves are a kind of death. Again, from de Sales:

It is then for the love of us that he desires we should love him, because we cannot cease to love him without beginning to be lost, and whatever part of our affections we take from him we lose. 

God loves us so much, he cannot abide anything that comes between us, anything that would interfere with the beauty and abundance that blooms within that love.

Why would we ever slip from that grip?

O love that will not let us go, we rest our weary souls in thee. Forgive us for our “other loves.” We praise you for how zealous you are for this relationship you have with us. Help us to be the same.

Reader: What is God’s biggest rival in your life?

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