My zeal consumes me, because my foes forget your words.
Psalm 119:139

The temperature difference between the blue and orange parts of a flame is 600 degrees. It’s hard to imagine that a deviance so wide could be of the same element when its reaction to oxygen presents two contrasting colors.

Hospitality is one of those virtues that is so ingrained in our culture, especially in the South, that the Biblical heart of it often gets traded for legalistic to-do lists and shows of affluence. Often when we host, we invest our time, money, and sanity, and it can feel like the crowd descends in a whirlwind for an hour or two and all we’re left with is a dirty house. I can’t be the only female who has ever wondered why the menfolk generally don’t write or expect thank you letters. It is the women who typically grumble about the shopping, the cleaning, and the cooking, and then grumble when no one seems appreciative enough. The empty feeling we have is because we’ve turned hospitality into entertaining, and by its very nature entertaining is consumption; you shouldn’t expect a return on it.

My frustration really peaks when I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into a relationship that is not reciprocated in the way I expected. When I’ve taught or advised someone who never gets it, when I’ve been vulnerable with someone who remains closed off, when I’ve prayed for someone but they never seem to have the same fire that I do.

The word “consume” in this Psalm literally means destroy. How it is used most often in the Bible is to mean “cut off,” like a valve to a gas burner. It is ironic that zeal, something that lights a person with passion, can be the thing to snuff them out. The flame of a candle burns 2,732 degrees hot, yet it can be put out in a pinch.

When you love someone, you feel a burning ardor for what is best for them. You want them to see themselves as you see them, as God sees them — image bearers who are worthy of a life “on track.” You are zealous about them, even jealous for their time and affection for God.  

As I thought about this verse, I realized that the “foes” the author refers to are not some foreigners or blood enemies. They are other Israelites, for who could forget God’s words but those that knew them to begin with? I am filled with rage at the thought of evil people hurting the innocent. I am grieved to think about the fate of unbelievers. But when my Christian brothers and sisters fall short of my desire to see them follow hard after God, it is zeal I feel, and it wears me out.

In the final moments before Jesus was captured, He prayed for His friends. They probably weren’t anywhere near as sanctified as they would be. They hadn’t received the Holy Spirit; some of them had yet to fall as far as they were going to before their phoenix uprising. Jesus had zeal for them — zeal enough to die — but it didn’t make Him falter in doing God’s will, nor in His own, deep-seated joy that drove Him toward the cross even while He shed tears and sweat blood.

But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
John 17:13

We rebuke and exhort the wayward Christian. But in the grey areas, sometimes it is enough to let the rich deposit of love we have drive us onward in opening our hearts and homes to people in hopes that they will share in it. Love hopes all things. Love does not have to be right about people. Love does not insist on its own way, even if that way seems godlier. Read those last three sentences again. Jealous love is a God-imaging trait only if it rolls off of us and up to Him. It is also liable to snuff out your passion, joy, and energy. Remember that Christ was perfect in every way, even in balancing His zeal. Even He had to round it back up to God so it wouldn’t trip Him up on His road to Calvary.  

With his last words He asked the Father to forgive His foes. We know from Isaiah that the Son of Man did not possess a zeal or jealousy that made him callous. He would not cry out in indignation for the glory denied Him. His blows were healing, not destroying. Where He saw people struggling to keep their feeble flames alight, He did not quench them. He tenderly cupped His hands around them and breathed out righteousness and justice until the fire was satisfied, and He did not grow weary or discouraged. Let us imitate our Lord.