The jealous God loves, and wants me. He wants me to be well, to succeed, to be happy. Because he loves all of creation, and because he wants me to grow, he might not always let me be happy, but he does want me to be. Through life, he gives me glimpses of good things so that I can come to understand him a little, like a good father, intelligence, a husband, a mother, a home. With this, I can obtain a kind of relationship with him. Furthermore, with these things that he made to help us understand, upon my requesting it and desiring to put him above all else, he has endowed me with his spirit. Because he loves me and wants me, with this spirit, he strengthens me, and he helps me. He delights in the truth and wants me to speak it. He despises lies that mask his glory, but tolerates them for our sake. We are broken. We cannot see him fully because we are used to the darkness and he is the sun. I see him now in little pieces. Eventually, I will see him fully, face-to-face, and then I will really know him - I will really know the truth. That is what I want, and that is what I will get.
If another should ever want him in that way, then that is exactly what they will get. God embraces me, holds on to me and as long as I don't want him to let go, he won't. I am soundly tucked in his arms, no matter what might try to pry me out of them. I would sacrifice my most prized possession for him, like he did for me. That is my God. He is strong, and fearless, and true, and right, and patient and jealous because he loves his people. He does not act out, and he has mercy, because he knows we are slaves to our own wills and diseased with habits that eat away at our souls. But he hates those habits because they harm us and pull us away from his life-giving love. Yet for his people, who he helps to come closer, we rejoice in suffering, because it produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that he gave us.
Christ died while we were still weak and broken, yearning for idols, and I was still weak and broken when I met him too. But the fact that he died not for perfect people, but for broken ones just shows how much he honestly cares and loves. We could barely comprehend him, and to behold him frightened us, but with that one act of sacrificial love, he was able to pour himself out and dwell among us, inside of us, so that we can become purified, and when this flesh dies, my soul will be wrapped up inside of his and will not die with my body, nor loosed into the wild to be claimed by other beastly spirits, but will be taken to a place of peace with him. And that love he displayed is what I want to know. That is the epitome of truth. I want to love so much that I would sacrifice anything for it, because love looses all chains. The more I exist in love, the more my priorities clear up, the more purpose I exist in, the more good I can do for the world, the more open to the truth I become, the more gracious I can be, the more hope-giving I can be, the more fearless I can be, and the more enriching I can be.
The truth will one day be revealed and so the seeking of it irrelevant. The future will pass and so the pursuing of it is worthless. The world was made to rot and renew and so beauty is a vain pursuit. Worldly rewards are a figment of the imagination. And so, what others want out of life is their business, but this love is what I want out of life, and the only way I can obtain it is through the God who is jealous for my soul, that he made, and longs to complete in him. That is the good of a jealous God, and that is why I long to continue to pursue him with every fiber of my being.
