Meeting

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Psalm 85:10


Virtues are personified in this chapter. Love is not Eros/Cupid with his bow who kills all reason and sense in you and makes you fall in and out of love. Biblically, love never fails: so if you fall out of love you were never in it in the first place.


True love and faithfulness go together like a hand in a glove. If you truly love someone you will be faithful to them. You will be steadfast in your devotion to them in the good times and in the bad: for better or for worse.


Righteousness means to put something right, to be just and fair. At face value it seems incompatible with peace because whenever we consider justice we tend to get into arguments about differing interpretations of it. But if all was right, we would live at peace with one another.


Peace in Hebrew, shalom, doesn't just mean an absence of hostility. It implies wholeness, wellbeing and security. Peace isn't just when we don't fight, it is when we actually get on well with each other. We can still have the difficult conversations about righteousness and yet be at peace with one another.


"Oh Lord, God of our salvation, thank you for all your virtues and the fact they are in harmony with each other. Thank you for your love, faithfulness and righteousness, and the peace you bestow upon us in Jesus Christ. Let us be similarly unified in goodness, for your glory, amen"

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