Agony

Agony

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate.

Isaiah 62:4

IN WORD Some couples break up easily. In a day of casual love, when many relationships are seen as temporary, a parting of the ways is often uneventful. People have found that uncommitted hearts don’t break very easily.

God’s heart doesn’t work that way. In the prophets’ descriptions of the Husband, God’s pain is agonizing. When the bride becomes a prostitute—yes, the metaphor for Israel’s and Judah’s idolatry is just that graphic—the Groom suffers. To illustrate His pain, God told Hosea to marry a prostitute as a prophetic illustration, He inspired Ezekiel to describe Judah as a harlot, and He had Jeremiah proclaim a divorce decree. The King of glory, deeply in love, watched His treasured bride leave the palace bedroom and go sleep with vagrants.

That’s why Judah found herself “deserted” and “desolate.” Not many husbands are content with harlotry in the house, so Judah was expelled from the house. The most loving heart in all of existence had been pierced by betrayal and rejection.

IN DEED But true love never gives up, and God’s love is always true. So after the exile of the bride, the Husband restored her. That’s the story of Israel, that’s the story of humanity, and that’s the story of each one of us who has been redeemed by His grace. We have all been unfaithful, we have all experienced alienation from our God, and we have all been offered reconciliation.

That’s what God’s heart is like. It loves passionately, it wounds deeply, and it persists eternally. God told Israel through the prophets that His love is forever, and He has told us the same thing through Jesus. The piercing of the Groom’s passionate heart was made visible one day on a hill outside of Jerusalem, and now creation waits for the revelation of the bride. And from the wedding day on, we will never hear the words “deserted” and “desolate” again.

I have asked but this of you, He cried. That you love Me . . . love Me . . . love Me.

—GENE EDWARDS