Catch the Little Foxes

Devotion for the week...

In Song of Songs, the young women caution the lovers to “Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming!” (Song of Songs 2:15). Apparently in Bible times, foxes that got into the vineyards could ruin the harvest and the writer used this imagery to represent the little irritations that can crop up in a relationship. If we let them, those little irritations can grow into big problems in our marriages or in any other relationship.

 

Peter once asked Jesus, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). Peter thought he was being generous, since the Jewish tradition at the time was to forgive a person three times, but Jesus went even farther. “No, not seven times,’ [He] replied, ‘but seventy times seven!” (v. 22). 

 

Some translations say 77 times rather than seventy times seven, but either way the implication is that we are to forgive and forgive and forgive and then just keep on forgiving.  

In any relationship, there can be things that get under our skin. Sometimes it’s a little habit the other person has that bugs us. Or maybe it’s things they don’t do that we wish they would do. We have to decide to extend grace every time so that those little things don’t ruin the relationship. 

 

Grace and forgiveness take away the potential destructive power of those little irritations.