“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

-Matthew 23:37, NIV

Spurned love.

I find it hard to believe a faithful spouse never loved their cheater. We did. What happened is the cheater rejected this love. They spurned it.

True, we may have love a false version of our cheater. Yet we engaged honestly in the effort to love them. That is why discovering cheating and the following divorce hurts so much!

We made our hearts vulnerable to this person.

They took advantage of this vulnerability. When we offered love, they spurned such an offering. That hurts.

I am thankful for this verse in Matthew. It reminds me that Jesus knows very well how it feels to have his love spurned. God knows this pain, too.

That helps.

We serve a God who understands our hurts. He “gets” what it is like to offer one’s heart only to feel the sting of violent rejection.

 

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*A version of this post ran previously.