Relationships, we’re in more of them than we realize. We have relationships with people, animals, food, money…our comforts. Most of them are business arrangements. We use each other to enrich our lives, animals to provide companionship and protection. We count on our food to provide nourishment, pleasure and comfort–not just for ourselves, but for whoever we’re feeding it to. Our money is to give us access, security, and prestige.

     But when our partners let us down, we should reevaluate our relationships for we tend to remain in them far longer than we should. When there is a breach of covenant, the contract is void, but we’ll forgive the breach again and again to our own hurt. And when we do, one partner increases in power while the other decreases until one becomes the master and the other his slave.

    We ignore the insults and indiscretions of people, though they hurt, just so they’ll remain in our lives…or we in theirs. And they seize upon our weakness and rule over us with a cruel hand.

    Despite allergies and ailments, we continue to eat, attracted to the foods that’re no good for us. And they reward us with obesity and other health problems.

     The alluring promises of money will cause us to do unimaginable things for it even when it delivers nothing but a handful of wishes and a pipe dream.

     Whenever we lose ourselves in a relationship, our former partner and new master takes us down destructive roads. When there is imbalance in a relationship, it’ll never tilt in our favor. For a relationship to be healthy, each party must do his part, but when there’s a breach in the contract, everything goes awry and the covenant must be reexamined. The betrayed party gets a say whether to go forward and under what conditions. But if he doesn’t address the breach, it’ll get bigger and it’ll get worse for him.

     Since food, money, and the like cannot think or plan, affirm or deny, it is not accurate to conclude that the actual covenant is with them directly. I surmise the true covenant is with our ideal of what these things are expected to provide. So when our ideals don’t measure up, the war is really against ourselves. We become our own enemy using dead things as scepters to foster peace or prescribe distress. We ascribe to them power they cannot use and bow down to them in homage.

     We are faithful to that which is unfaithful to us and unfaithful to the faithful. We want to live but crave death. We are attracted to everything that gives us the opposite of what we need.

     It is a wonder that the Lord would go into a covenant with us knowing how fickle and treacherous we are. It is a wonder because we have nothing He needs, but He is everything we need. He can speak and it is so. There is no one who can stop Him and yet He gives us the power to choose. It is a wonder that He would subject Himself to the likes of us, His creation and still remain the Master.

     His love is a mystery. And we are but a mere thorn in His side.