Jealousy

You high mountains of Bashan, 
you rugged mountains of Bashan,
You rugged mountains, why look with envy 
at the mountain where God has chosen to dwell, 
where the LORD resides forever? - Ps 68: 16-17

I get one sense of these verses as a boast and a comfort: other mountains may be higher, but Zion will have the Lord's dwelling forever. While addressed to Bashan, these verses' target audience might well be the inhabitants of Mount Zion.

In these latter days, of course, the Lord has made his dwelling with each of us, and so there is no need for any of us to have envy of another. What more could a mere human want than for the eternal creator of the universe to make his home within our mortal flesh? Why then do we continue to long instead for the gifts that belong to our brother or our sister rather than appreciating those which are rightly ours?

And yet in love our heart often aches for the presence of those gone from us. It is hard for us to know at the depth of our being that we are united with them always, that God will never allow us to truly be separated from one another. The unity of the Holy Spirit may seem a more ephemeral thing than the physical space and time which separate us, can seem more myth than the ever-present pain in our heart, and yet I hope we discover it to be the more real and eternal truth.