Cheating on God!?

As my journey through the prophets continues I have recently finished reading Isaiah and have started Jeremiah. I would have to say that the biggest difference between them so far is that Isaiah speaks more about hope for the future while Jeremiah talks about the punishment of the present. For that I feel that Jeremiah unjustly gets a bum rap and that will be the subject of another post which answers the question “Is God harsh?” For now, as a sort of prelude, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a certain verse/passage, well actually a chapter. The chapter I’ve been thinking about is chapter 3 which talks about the unfaithful Israel. First off note, not faithless, unfaithful meaning (using our trusty thesaurus) “disloyal, untrue, false, two-timing…” I was struck by that image and the standard God uses in telling Jeremiah. The chapter starts off “If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again… but you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers – would you now return to me?” Then in verse 20 it says “But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me…” Now I found that interesting for a few reasons, but the main one is that I never thought about sin in that way. When I sin, not only do I take a step away from God, I cheat on Him. Think about a marriage, if one person cheats on the other two issues arise 1) You don’t love me the same anymore and 2) I can’t trust you from now on. That must be how God feels, as expressed in this passage. See, it’s not about saying “Oh, God doesn’t love me/ He won’t forgive me.” It’s “Wow, looking at my life I cheated on God – how can He trust me?” The thing about the Bible is that it is not just a history book, it is a love letter written (or dictated) by God to man. It’s God’s way of saying “Hey you! Read this because it says how much I love you! Please come back, don’t cheat on me, I am enough.” To be honest I’ve cheated on God, I’ve cheated on Him with pride, anger, greed…. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions and it may be a bit late for one but here’s mine: for the rest of 2011 I will try to be more faithful to God and to love and trust Him always.