You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. - Isaiah 62:4

In the marriage service in The Book of Common Prayer, early on there is a part called “The Declaration of Consent”. The groom is asked the following: Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? The bride is asked the same.

I remind the bride and groom that while a lot of thought goes into a wedding day and many emotions are felt, the primary focus is on the will. Each is making a choice. The vows are acts of the will. That doesn’t diminish what is happening. It actually enhances it because each is being chosen for this special status and relationship out of all the other possibilities (“forsaking all others”).

Now imagine this, in some sense, is what God says to you as one of His people. God is often portrayed in the Scriptures as a bridegroom, as we see in Isaiah 62. His covenant (notice that language in the wedding service) with us is firm and unshakeable. He loves you. He comforts you. He honors and keeps you. And all of this is true even in both the good (“health”) and the bad (“sickness”) times. And unlike human marriage which ends at death, God’s steadfast love for us will never end because He is eternal.

Imagine how this must have stirred the hearts of God’s people in Isaiah’s day. Much of their experience had been the opposite of this promise. And the fault for that lay with them. Their sin and rebellion and unwillingness to heed the prophetic call to repentance was the cause of their plight. So they were Forsaken, no longer enjoying the blessing of God and having His face turned towards them. And the end result was they were Desolate, physically as they were overrun by foreign armies and taken into exile and spiritually as their hearts remained cold and distant from God, their groom.

In much the same way, we can be like the Israelites to whom Isaiah preached. We have not been faithful to our part of the covenant and rightly deserve forsakenness and desolation. But Jesus in His perfect life of obedience to the Law did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And now clothed in His righteousness, we are recipients of God’s love, forgiveness, and patience. Because He is faithful, even when we are faithless, we will never be forsaken and we will never be alone.   He delights in us and loves us. And that is truly good news!