me, rachael and the opposite of love

I’ve got a theory about why couples fight. I mean obviously on some level it’s because any two people will disagree about some things, and will sometimes deal with this by arguing. But I think that with couples, there’s a deeper kind of subconscious thing going on. Because it seems to me, that it’s only when a relationship is under threat that you feel anything close to the full weight of your affection for the other person. So in a way, every time you fight and make up you get to experience again how much you really care about them.

Me and Rachael to be fair don’t argue very much, but what we do do, with the whole Exeter/Cambridge distance thing, is say goodbye. A lot. And on Wednesday morning this week, I had to walk her back to the train station, and then walk home alone. And on that walk, I really felt it. I was gutted. And the ridiculous amount that I care about Rachael, was at least as tangible then, maybe even more so, than at any point when we’d been together. Of course there were some beautiful moments, but I think that maybe when the other person gets taken away, it’s like (if you’ll forgive the cliché) you realise that you were only noticing the sparkling tip of an iceberg and there was a lot of weight going on much, much deeper than you could see.

Anyway, for the rest of Wednesday I wasn’t quite my jovial self, but then it got to Thursday morning. And on Thursday morning I read a tiny little bit of John’s account of Jesus’s life. There’s this bit towards the end where Jesus is with his friends just before he’s going to get arrested and then killed, and he’s trying to tell them everything they need to know before it happens, trying to say everything he has left to say so that they’ll be OK when he goes. And he says this:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

As I read, I remembered something I’d heard a long time ago. In the Jewish culture Jesus was living in, marriage happened in two stages, the first one a bit like getting engaged but loads more serious. And what would happen was, that there would be this engagement ceremony, and they would make promises and everything, but then the husband would go back to his father’s house, and build an extension for him and his new wife to live in. Then when it was ready, he would come back for her, they would be fully married, and they would go to live together in the place that he’d prepared.

And I’m not an expert on first century Jewish culture, but I remember being told by someone who was that what Jesus says here comes almost straight out of that engagement ceremony. He tells us he’s going away to prepare a place for us in his father’s house, but he’s coming back and he’s going take us to be with him so that where he is, we will be also.

And as I read those words it just kind of hit me, that Jesus actually has affection for me. For us. He wants us to be where he is. He really likes us and he wants to be with us, and he doesn’t want to say goodbye.

It’s starting to make sense to me as well that God calls himself a ‘jealous God’. It always used to seem strange – it seems like jealousy has got to be a bad thing, a negative emotion, so I always put it next to the bits where God seems to be angry in my special box of ‘things that I gently ignore because I don’t get how God could be like that’. But I heard someone say this the other day:

“The opposite of love isn’t anger. The opposite of love is indifference.”

And I think that is true. If I try, unpleasant as it is, to imagine how I would feel if it turned out that Rachael was seeing someone else, and I knew this guy and I knew that he would not care for her and he didn’t really love her; I know for sure I wouldn’t be saying ‘Oh well, I love her so I don’t mind.’ My heart would be coming out through my ribs. My face would be melting.

And strange as it is, God says that’s how he feels – and I’m starting to believe him. He is not indifferent to me. He really, actually cares about us. He has affection for us. And it really does matter to him whether I love him back. Too often and too easily we think that we don’t really matter – but I’m pretty sure that the reality is that we have been given the power to break the heart of God. Or to delight it. I don’t know about you but I find that so beautiful that it’s almost frightening.