A Bear Robbed of Her Cubs

Well, I feel I did find God over this past week here in the Canadian Rockies. Yet in an elusive sort of way, a bit like the bears they kept warning us about at the resort. “There have been a few sightings this past week,” we were told. “They’re timid creatures, really, so make sure you make some noise, holler and clap when you’re walking the trails, so they keep away.” It added just a little bit of silent menace to those otherwise wonderful walks, But it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. It added to the richness of the experience, to have that  dangerous strength somewhere lurking in the undergrowth. A bit like Mr Beaver’s description of Aslan, the lion, in the Narnia books. For me, the presence of God this past week felt like the presence of the bears, always there, just not visible. This was their territory. This was their land. We were their guests.

On the way back, driving to Lake Louise and Banff, we listened to a Tim Keller sermon on the jealousy of God - "I the Lord your God, am a jealous God" - and how that jealousy is manifested in what Keller called, God’s “angry love”. The phrase that immediately popped into my mind, I suppose because we were still driving through Bear Country, was “a bear robbed of her cubs”. That snarling blind fury of an animal when anything threatens its relationship with its children. And when anything happens to move us away from our relationship with God as our father, including what we ourselves do, with our laziness, our faithlessness, our waywardness, then we bear the full brunt of that fury of a Jealous God. But it’s a jealousy whose aim is ultimately not to destroy but to heal and put right that which is out of joint. The old prophet Hosea 13:18 describes it in his customary colourful language

“I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt...I cared for you in the desert, in the land of burning heat...But when I fed them, they became satisfied and proud.....Then they forgot me... So, I will come on them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will attack them and rip them open....”.

James, in the New Testament, links this fiery jealousy to the reality of God’s grace which we receive in ever greater measure, and which works in us to heal the relationship, and thus avert the fury brought on by His jealousy.

http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/jealousy-god

Hosea 13:4-8.    James 4:1-6  “God’s spirit, which He caused to live in us, longs jealously for us. That’s why he gives us more grace...”