His love cleanses us and heals us.
I’m sitting across the room from a beautiful couple at Starbucks. They gaze into each other’s eyes, hold hands between texting, and sip their spiced lattes. He is perfect, very preppy. She is perfect too, with long, blonde hair.
Then I read Ezekiel 16. This powerful and disgusting chapter from Holy Scripture details the love relationship between God and his people, as allegorized by a man and an abandoned baby. He finds an abandoned baby in a field, whose parents were of sketchy origin, to say the least. She is cast off into an open field, unwashed after birth and wallowing in blood. She’s caked with mud and her umbilical cord is wrapped around her still. I can imagine that the flies were swarming, too.
Despite the fact that she’s desperately unwanted, a man comes along and happens to notice her. Instead of passing by, as do countless others, he stops to take a look. He decides to have pity on the awful site in front of his eyes, caring for the baby girl and bringing her back to life. His love leads her back to life; and she grows into a beautiful woman. Eventually, as the story goes (remember, this is only a story!), he marries her. He marries the one who had once been rotting in a field, turning her into royalty.
I look back at the cute couple in front of me and wonder. What if he saw her thrown into a field, covered in blood and mud, with her umbilical cord still wrapped around her neck—would he still want to hold her hand? How far would his love go for her? The truth is that, were she homeless and wallowing in blood in an open field, he would most likely never dream of stopping. He’d walk on by, just like we all would do, and have done before.
We would never fathom doing otherwise. We love people that are safe, not messy, not dirty, not needy. We want to give our hearts away to those that are like us, not to those who are so radically different. (And that’s the point of having the story be about a man and a baby.) Our “love” does not know what to do with such stark challenges.
God wants to have a relationship with us, that’s the thrust of the story. He’ll take us how we are, but he won’t leave us like that. His love will cleanse us and heal us. His love will turn us into queens.
But the story doesn’t have a good ending; the woman abandons her husband and plays the whore, giving herself away to other men. She leaves the one who gave her so much love. This thought strikes me: you know how we like to ask the question, “Where is God when it hurts?” This story shows us that our assumption is dead wrong. The real question is, “Where are we when it hurts?” Where is God? God is pursuing us, cleansing us, and giving us his covenant love. Where are we? We are going after other guys, making other relationships more important than that of the God who saved us.
© Samuel Kee, 2011
