Day 49. Song of Songs 8:6-7

Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it.

My natural instinct is to be zealous; as a result, I was, and I don’t know if I am still, quite intransigent in my views or approaches and caused so much hurt to those who are close to me. But I never understood why – I am showing my zeal for the Lord. So, why are these people not being able to understand it? Shouldn’t they be proud of my zeal?

Then the LORD showed me that the zeal must be out of love – love for Him and love for others. While it took sometime for me to accept that zeal, per se, is not what the LORD wanted from me, I still could not accept that love and zeal can go together.

And this is a verse that the Lord gave me long back and as a teenager, this was a sincere prayer I made. And to this day, the LORD has set me as a seal upon His heart and His arm. Though many waters roared against me, and I was under the waters sometimes, they could not quench His love. Then I remembered the number of times I had left His side and how He pulled me back. While I had suffered a lot during those times, it was because of my mistakes; not because the LORD, in His zeal, punished me. I was disciplined every single time, but even then, when I raised my voice and cried unto Him, He showed His love for me and got me closer and closer to Him. And in that gentle love, I saw His zeal for me. And He made me realize that this is what He expects from me. I only pray that I can show the same loving zeal to others, like God showed unto this poor creature.