It all starts with being vulnerable...

Back when I was a teenager, I used to underline or highlight verses, and scribble notes in the margins of my Bible. The result of this practice was that I eventually filled up every available inch of white space and ended up having to buy a new Bible every four or five years. I still have two of those Bibles, covered with my notes and insights from around 1975 - 1982. The other disadvantage of my "marginalised note taking" (apart from the fact that I risked offending a Muslim or Jew by defacing the holy scriptures in this way) was that each time I read a passage, I was reminded of what God had revealed to me the previous time I had meditated on it. I realised that I was in danger of falling into the same thought patterns on every reading, instead of allowing God to reveal new and different things to me each time I read His Word. And so, in 1982, I began writing in the first of dozens of journals that have recorded my Bible reading over the last three decades.

The notes may no longer be in the margins of my Bible, but it still happens sometimes that I read a passage and am vividly reminded of a truth that stood out to me on a previous reading, or an insight that impacted my life in some way in the past. Reading in 1 Samuel chapter 18 this week, for example, I was reminded of a Bible study I'd done towards the end of 2007 on the subject of covenants. I had been looking at different kinds of covenants in the Bible - with God and with people - and had been struck by something in this account of how David and Jonathan make a covenant of friendship. We sometimes hear talk of  "covenant relationships" - referring to a church fellowship or to a ministry team, to a marriage or perhaps to a friendship between two people. But what does that really mean?

The thing that struck me in the story of Jonathan and David's friendship was the part in verse 4 where their covenant was sealed by a gift: Jonathan gave David his outer garment and armour (sword, bow, belt.) I found it deeply symbolic that Jonathan was demonstrating trust and making himself totally vulnerable. He was laying down his covering (nowhere to hide!) and his means of protecting himself. In a truly covenantal relationship, whether it's a marriage or a friendship, we are choosing vulnerability and putting ourselves completely at the mercy of our friend's or spouse's commitment to the covenant. Yes, it's a risk - but without vulnerability, there can be no deep sharing of lives. If one or both persons is hiding behind a mask, the friendship will never go beyond a superficial level. Yes, covenant vulnerability opens us up to the possibility of betrayal and heartache and pain…. but that too can be redeemed in God's scheme of things.

The alternative is to refuse and avoid vulnerability: playing safe by not revealing anything personal that could ever be used against us; protecting ourselves from possible harm or pain by keeping people slightly at arm's length, or at least not allowing them to get "too close." The outcome of this, however, is a different kind of loss and pain: a sense of isolation, and perhaps a nagging fear that people might not really love us if they truly knew what we were like. But when we do take the risk, when we do embrace the vulnerability that leads to covenant relationships, we'll discover the freedom of belonging, of being loved and accepted for who we are, with our weaknesses as well as our strengths. We'll discover that our marriages are stronger and our friendships are deeper and more rewarding. And maybe we'll also discover a new strength in our relationship with Jesus, the One who wants to be our very best Friend of all.