Jealousy is Divine

Strange as it sounds, I was reminded of a Rod Stewart song recently while reading from Exodus 20. I don't have a real affinity for secular music in general, or Rod Stewart in particular, but the song in question came out while I was in college, and I "connected" with it. He sang of what torture it is when the one you love is in love with someone else. At the time, I happened to be smitten with a girl who was smitten with another guy, and it was as painful as Stewart's wailing suggested.

What reminded me of it was the first commandment and its accompanying words of explanation:

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt...You shall have no other gods before Me...For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..."

Reading about the jealousy of God, I think of the wrenching agony that I felt back then every time what's-her-name would mention what's-his-name. No doubt you and I have subjected the Lord to such despair, magnified and multiplied, many times: when, in days of distress, we seek our comfort from the television set; when our excitement is more easily roused by a basketball victory than thoughts of eternal life wrought by God's mercy and Jesus' blood; when the bulk of our time and work is invested in short-lived, flesh-pleasing earthly kingdoms.

Jesus proclaimed harsh woes upon an evil and adulterous generation. Not that they were all literally committing adultery, but that their affections were directed toward things other than the God with whom they shared a covenant. It was spiritual adultery that we ourselves are in daily danger of committing.

As Rich Mullins put it, stuff of earth competes for the allegiance we owe only to the giver of all good things. May He grant us the grace to forsake our silly gods, and give the fat portions of our love to Him.