Day Twenty-Nine

Day Twenty-Nine // March 30 // The Roots of Disloyalty

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake –

They should’ve known better. Maybe I should’ve known better.

Listen deeply. Listen honestly. And you will hear it: the echo of these words reverberating in your own soul. They echo because they bounce – they bounce off the stony walls that we’ve built up to shield us from those times we suffered rejection. They bounce off the chasms of grief, brokenness and pain that were eroded by moments of betrayal. Any of us who’ve ever dared to love another has felt it. Any of us who’ve ever chanced the odds to be truly vulnerable has feared it: disloyalty – the gutting reality that something we’ve trusted has been untrue.

Whether a lie of the heart or a rebellion of the mind – disloyalty comes just close enough into us to jab its wicked dagger into our most tender and unexpecting of places: our souls.

At its heart, though, such disloyalty is not the absence of loyalty; it is loyalty misdirected, misguided. It is the short-sighted and self-serving operation of those who are looking out only for themselves, who are loyal only to themselves.

What a pitiable and lonely place it must be: to betray a friend for personal gain. What a fearful and monochromatic world in which to live: to be so desperate to get ahead that we’d step on those we’d leave behind. Faced with such a reality, common sense would tell us to run, to flee. It would tell us to build such high and impenetrable walls that no one would ever be able to get through to hurt us again. But this is not the way of faith; for Jesus knew the wincing pain of rejection – the sight of his followers’ backs running off in the torchlight of Gethsemane. Jesus knew the stinging agony of betrayal – Judas’ approach, his eyes and his kiss. But Jesus’ response was not distance. Jesus’ response was nearness. He would pursue those who ran; He would forgive those who fled. Jesus’ response was not to escape or to protect Himself; it was to give Himself – to give Himself over to all that we would try to avoid, praying that some might believe.

Such is the power of God’s love: that it would see beyond all our own disloyalties and still call us to His side. It calls us to selflessness, grace and to a profound and courageous loyalty to the Almighty – a loyalty that would turn our face to all those who’ve turned their backs.