“My soul clings to you” (Psalm 63:8)
Not long ago we had a new resident in our front yard. A cute bunny. She had dug a hole there so that she could come out and eat the grass around it. I say she because I researched, and female bunnies tend to be the general contractor of hole digging. About the same time our bunny took residence in our yard, we purchased a little resin bunny and placed it on top of a small decorative brick retaining wall Reid and I built in the front flower bed. For the first couple of mornings after making our new purchase, I looked out the front door and our new little resin friend was knocked off her perch on the wall. We both decided that during the night our general contractor bunny was investigating our resin bunny a little too closely. Fortunately, we had some good adhesive that we put on the bottom of the resin bunny, and now she is holding firmly to her place of honor. The real bunny however was not so fortunate. She must have been evicted by our condo association because we haven’t seen her for some time now.
The bible has many references about holding firmly. We first read about a husband holding firmly or cleaving to his wife (Genesis 2:24). The Hebrew word used there is the word davaq. That word then sets the precedence to illustrate many intimate attachments in the bible, such as David describing his misery by saying that his “tongue sticks (davaqs) to the roof of his mouth” (Psalm 22:15). Or Job describing the beast Leviathan as having scales that are stuck so tightly (davaqed) that they interlock and cannot be penetrated (Job 41:17). The word also describes the way Ruth was attached (davaqed) to her mother-in-law Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17). Today in modern Hebrew, the word davaq means glue or adhesive, like what we put on our little resin bunny.
So, when the apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians 6:17 that “whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit”, he used the Greek equivalent of davaq to express how deeply we are joined to, glued to, adhered to Jesus Christ. You could call our unity with Christ spiritual super glue. We are forever united to the Lord, and no one will ever be able to separate us from that relationship. Paul comforted us in Romans 8:39 by writing, “Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Jesus Christ cleaves to us with his love for us. We are to cleave to him with our faith in him. And even though our faith may falter and fail at times, his love for us will never fail. He will never leave us, lose us, turn his back on us, forsake us, or drop us and break us. Nothing or no one can knock us out of our secure davaq position with him.
Darlene