Promises

by: Michael Wilcock

It was all to do with that wedding, so many chapters back, so many years ago: the covenant of love between the Lord and Israel. Why had the marriage never worked out? For once there was no question which party was to blame. Hers was the wandering eye, the self-centeredness, the ingratitude. His was the endless patience, and the determination that in the end their original promises to each other should be made good.

As we have already been reminded, Israel found it hard to understand his methods and his timing. Why should she forfeit the beautiful home he had prepared for her? And as we have seen already, it would be seventy years before she found herself back there, and far longer than that before this further extraordinary promise came true and she found herself able to love him as he loved her. That change of heart would only come about through the unimaginable events that were to take place in that same country six centuries later.

Brightest of the promises that make chapters 30 through 33 a sunburst of hope in this gloomiest of books is the removing of the sin that spoils the marriage and the giving of the Spirit who remakes it (John 1:29, 33).