Steadfast Love – Proverbs 3:3,4

What is among the most important things you want your children or grandchildren to learn in life?  How do you want them to be regarded by others?  Would it surprise you that Solomon wanted his son to be characterized by love?

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;

bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.

So you will find favor and good success

in the sight of God and man. (Proverbs 3:3-4, ESV)

When Yahweh appeared to Moses at Moses’ request (Exodus 33:18-34:8), He told Moses a place to stand, covered him with His “hand” and let him see His “back” but not His “face” and whatever Moses saw we don’t know, but we know what Moses heard.  Yahweh passed before Moses and said,

“YAHWEH, YAHWEH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…” (Exodus 34:6-7, ESV)

God described himself as having an over-abundance of steadfast love and faithfulness.  God’s love for Israel was being sorely tested in the wilderness, but He never stopped loving Israel, which meant He did not ignore their sin but found a way to forgive it.  And He never stopped keeping His covenant with Israel even though Israel repeatedly broke the covenant, in the most egregious case making a golden calf idol to worship while Moses was up on Mt. Sinai getting the covenant prescriptions from God.

Wisdom is imitating God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.  But for us there is always the likelihood that such character will abandon or forsake us.  Instead of staying our love on someone who hurts us we will act protectively to shield ourselves from being hurt again and cut them off or set a boundary with them that amounts to the same thing.  Instead of remaining steadfast in our love we will seek relationship only with those who can bring us gain.  Instead of being true to our covenant with others we will let faithfulness forsake us and will not keep our covenant vows we made.  After all, if you’re not faithful to me why should I be faithful to you?

If we want to be wise, if we want to find favor with God and man, we will do something about this proclivity of ours to drive off steadfast love and faithfulness.  We will bind them around our neck.  I think of a couple who exchange the heart necklaces with each having a portion of a heart that fits together with the other person’s necklace.  Wearing it on our necks is a constant reminder of our desire to stay in love.  We need a constant reminder to stay in love with all those around us and to stay faithful to our agreements with them.  It may be a literal necklace we wear to remind us or some other way of binding steadfast love and faithfulness around our neck.

If we want to be wise and find favor with God and man we will write steadfast love and faithfulness on the tablet of our heart.  We will make these characteristics such a value that we never abandon them, or at least, when we do, we allow our hearts to remain softened to the need for repentance and we get back on the path.  We keep asking to see God and experience His steadfast love and faithfulness as the pattern for our own.

Loving Father, Christ, and Holy Spirit, would you teach me Your love?  Would you expose every remark, behavior and thought that does not conform to Your loving passion for every person?  I want to be known as a person who loves, Lord.  Make me that kind of person.