FRUITLESS LOVE


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How can you say, 'I am not unclean, I have not gone after the Baals'? Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done— a restless young camel running here and there, a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her. Keep your feet from going unshod and your throat from thirst. But you said, 'It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners, and after them I will go.' "How well you direct your course to seek love! So that even to wicked women you have taught your ways. From it too you will come away with your hands on your head, for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust, and you will not prosper by them.
 Jeremiah 2:23-25, 33, 37 ESV



The kinds of things upon which Israel set its love, while easily available and deceptively easy, cannot be trusted. Our thirst for relationship can lead us astray. What we perceive as free love can be consumed in mere lust. Humans in their relationships can never bear spiritual fruit by contacting each other directly, but only when Jesus is between them. Otherwise we are but like camels lusting in the desert.



Human hearts and looks deceive me; 

Thou art not, like them, untrue.
 
O while Thou dost smile upon me, 

God of wisdom, love, and might, 

Foes may hate and friends disown me, 

Show Thy face and all is bright.


Henry F. Lytle, 1833


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