What relationships
are the most important to you?
In the Song of Songs, the human soul’s relationship to God is likened to a marriage, an
eternal bond between the divine and the human that is as intimate as the
relationship between husband and wife.
Earlier still, the Book of Genesis describes an existence in which, as
God says, it is not good for the man to
be alone. From the beginning, we are
born to be in relationship with other; our ties of kinship are based
paradoxically on the strength (bone)
and vulnerability (flesh) that
underpins every human relationship, and yet thanks to them, we can become one. The notion of family is thus born, a notion
given expression in Psalm 128 where a man’s wife
shall be like a fruitful vine; his children
like olive plants, growing strong through community, through connection,
through kinship.
When, in Mark’s
Gospel, Jesus is challenged on the lax divorce laws of his time, his concern is
for the bonds created by God: what God has joined together, no human being
must separate. Our relationships –
with other, with God – are predicated upon our attempt to try to recognize
God’s love at work in our lives and to live it.
We, like the children Jesus
calls to himself, are utterly
dependent upon God; we need to look to God to effect the bonds of relationship
we rely upon in our everyday lives. The
bond established between the first man and woman reflects our relationship with
God; it is foundational in our understanding of how much God loves us. That love is given expression in the Letter to the Hebrews, which reminds us that God loved the world so very much that God
sent his Son who for a little while was
made lower than the angels – human,
in other words. Jesus, for whom and through whom all things exist, the
one through whom God made all of creation, is the natural choice to be the one
through whom all will be restored to relationship with the Father.
God’s love for all
God has created is so great that nothing is more important than to reach out in
love to that creation. Salvation is the
ultimate bond, the ultimate connection, the ultimate fruit of that relationship
which has its first mirror in the bond of Genesis, so that the two of them may become
one flesh. We are not meant to be
alone; we are meant to live in relationship, in community, in kinship with the
God who made us, and the community God creates for us.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordle.net
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