Romancing The Rock

The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. [Ps 97:1 NIV]

I love to dig really deep into a verse sometimes. You can discover real gems that way, and this is one of them. Well, I think so anyway.

I wanted to know what it meant by ‘let the earth be glad’, or in other translations, ‘let the earth rejoice’. So, I looked up the original Hebrew word and meaning. I was delighted to find that the word used here means “to spin around (under the influence of any violent emotion), ie usually rejoice.” [Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible]

The earth literally spins around in response to God’s sovereignty! How awesome is that! What we see as a natural process is actually Creation’s response to her Creator. I love it!

Out of curiosity, I went further. What other verses use this word? I wondered. This is what I found:

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. [Zephaniah 3:17 NIV]

I love this. Where it says ‘he will rejoice over you’, it is using the same word as in ‘let the earth rejoice’. God actually spins around, dancing and singing over you–under violent emotion, I might add. Wow, what a powerful image that is.

So much for the traditional thought of God sitting up there on His throne, with a frown on His face, ready to judge you and cast you out of His presence.

Nope. He is dancing and singing like a young man in love–for you!

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. [Rev 2:4 NIV]

Sometimes, I like to look at things in reverse. This verse, for instance. We usually read it in the context of our relationship with God. Today I am going to look at it from the view of His love for us.

If God, the perfect one, can reprimand us for not keeping our first love fresh, then the opposite must be true of Him. He always loves us with first love. Every day. Forever.

Imagine that! Think about how lovers act when they are in the midst of that honeymoon-like, gooey-eyed, passionate first love. They can talk to each other all night. They never want to leave each other’s side. They want to know every detail about one another. They talk about each other to everybody they see. They cannot see any faults in the other. Their eyes are filled with light and love.

That’s the kind of love we need to keep fresh for our Lord, but what I love is that that is precisely how He loves us–all the time! The light never dies from His eyes. He always wants to be with you and communicate with you–He can’t get enough of you! Doesn’t that make you feel great? And special? And…well…loved?

You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. [Song of Solomon 4:9 NIV]

Be encouraged. No matter what you do or how you live, nothing will diminish God’s love for you, not even a tiny bit.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Rom 8:38-39 NIV]