Jonathan, reflecting on his friendship with David

I Samuel 18:1

After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself

O Lord, how imperfect is the loving heart! The more it loves, the more it sees the weakness of its love.

O love, love, how weak you are in this heart of mine, how dim your motions, how dependent your actions, how low your motivations! O love, give to me your fullness, for in your fullness I disappear, though happy and complete! Self-forgetfulness is the sweetest emotion!

David by all rational considerations should be my enemy, and so it is whispered throughout the household of my father that we both play each other false, that the professed and much remarked on love we share is no more than a carefully manufactured front, a calculated machination, a deceiving maneuver designed to confuse each other while in competition we make our alliances, each pursuing for his own ends the throne that has been promised to David when my father dies. Our friendship a veneer upon ambitious hearts, perhaps on some level sincere, but at the bottom a temporary convenience, a scattering of dust in my opponent's eyes. The root of our supposed rivalry is my loss, the supplantation of the scepter from the rightful (in the eyes of the world, no more!) inheritor to the youngest of eight sons. This is how it looks, David from a semi-obscure clan (and shepherd when anointed! the people often scoff at this, forgetting my father's origins as a donkey wrangler) an upstart driven to prominence by his heroic exploits against the Philistines, Jonathan the royal son, the deserved owner, heroic in my own right but not acclaimed by the people. I know that the gossips love to talk about our approaching emnity, the day when Saul dies and the two rivals grasp for the throne, like men of the world, as if this were any other kingdom, and the throne any other throne!

No, this is foolishness, spoken only by foolish men, men who cannot penetrate and know the power of God. He, after all, chose David, even as he did my father, sending the holy man Samuel to anoint his head and proclaim him king. This is the decree of God, spoken through his prophet, as he decrees all things. A word, a spoken word by God himself, declaring and decreeing: "This man will be king," the oil pouring down his head symbolizing the glorious presence of the Spirit in him, the Spirit of God which enables men to rule. This is the pattern, once done for my father, though the Spirit has long abandoned him, never dwelling with him, even then just coming upon him for a few moments, those brief days of his glory when he prophesied and by God's power struck down our enemies. Those days are over, my father's power gone, and now he coasts on the memories in his own mind and in the people's. He cowers and blusters alternately, according to his perception of his power, hiding when weak and strutting when strong. It is pathetic to watch.

I love my father. I cannot but love him. But this love makes no unreasonable claim on me. I will obey him as king, as father, as the created order demands that I do. But if he sets himself up against the God of heaven, he will not find me at his side, for no man can oppose God and live.

I must submit my heart to God, and where my heart goes, so goes my conversation. Were David the most odious man in Israel, he and I opposed in spirits from natural differences, were he hated by me in bitterness, yet even then I must submit my heart to what God has done, for God has done it. Need there be any other reason but that God has done it? This is easy at times and hard at others, but it is as it is. Let God's word stand, and you may stand with it.

Remember, heart, remember when you ventured on God that day when my father hid! O heart, thrill to it, the memory of fighting in his power! O to live through and for him is a great gift, and in his power I am as I should be. This will ever be my glory, charging that hill with my shield-bearer, carried up by the Spirit-given confidence in God's power, the sudden realization that God could save whether by many or by few. My heart owns that day, that moment, and it cannot be taken from me.

This memory, in its positive manifestation fuels my consideration of God in his negative manifestation. Alike but opposite, for the God that struck down the Philistines with my sword can also strike me down by David's sword. This is fear, a lower emotion, a motivation that is neutral with regard to David himself, considering as it does only God, not the one God defends. Thus it is also my joy that the one God defends is also one my heart springs up to defend, the one for whom my sword will ever move, the one to whom my whole self submits, for though I would submit to him as an ordered act (meaning, that in my submission to God himself I also submit to the one his hand places over me), God has given grace, a surpassing grace, to unite also my heart to the one to whom I submit, making it a joy.

David is my friend.

Friendship, that unique gift, that beautiful thing, reveals to us that God is a God of comfort, that God is a God of good pleasure and happiness. For what is more pleasing than a friend? Men can interact with each other as they choose, in kindness, patience, cheerfulness, but in the sudden mystery of two hearts, there are unnoticed connections, congealing into a whole that is greater than its parts, a joy that exceeds what the rational mind would expect, both a joy and an enjoyment. Friendship delights not only in the object but in the delight itself, celebrating itself even as it celebrates each party. For I love David, but I also love our love.

What can I say about the man? We enjoy one another's company. When I am with him, I feel safety and joy, that I can share all with him without fear of reprisal, without fear of it being leveraged against me (so opposite from what the slanderers make of us!). I return this also to him, hearing of his secret sins and fears, the distresses of his position in its awkwardness. Because I have surrendered my heart to his kingship, serving him indeed as king now, for he is king before the Lord and I also stand before the Lord, because of this yielding we have peace and trust, a trust that moves beyond our situation, transcending it for it gives us a glimpse of each other's hearts. What God gives, he gives, and we possess his gift, this friendship, unexplainable, though a mystery contained, that is identified as a mystery and known in its reaches.

In parts, examine it. First, there is a mutual direction, a shared goal. Friendships can be summed up by this, though this is not friendship in truth. Second, there is time spent, certainly acknowledged as a essential part of friendship! Third, hilarity and laughter, that marking of all friendships, the causing of joy in one another. What is mutual laughter? The spilling out of joy taken in one another? It is hard to define, but friends share this. Fourth, a persistence, a moving through, a determination towards a person. No friendship is properly known until it has been tried, until something has examined it. Fifth, something.

Yes, an ineffable something. Can you define it, even as you recognize it? I will define it, though in its definition it will perhaps grow more mysterious, not less. It is a motion of God's Spirit that makes our spirits one. This is friendship, a oneness that is almost unbreakable, that rests in the spirit of each man but is nurtured by their actions, their choices. Why does God cause this in us? There is no necessity to it, no requirement. Yes, we live in community, one with another, banding together for mutual protection, the providing of strength where others are weak in an exchange that makes the whole people stronger. But friendship goes quite beyond this to endue such strengthenings with an unexplainable joy, to give us these heart connections that exalt and magnify our shared paths. For in friendship we walk together, a necessary action, but it is unnecessary that the walking should also be a joy. What grace is displayed here! What surpassing compassion! God reveals himself to us in our friendships as a God of compassion, even as he revealed himself to Moses and to our beloved ancestors!

But we are men yet. Friendship, even at its most profound, can be broken, destroyed, the gift of God swept away. Friendship can grow cold, distant, a joy lost, a pleasure forsaken when the self is remembered, when in the midst of its self-forgetting joys we are ambushed by a sudden sense of our selves, a sudden reminder that this is two in one, and that in each moment to be one requires a forsaking of something.

This is how it is in this poor world, in all things. To gain greater joys we must forsake the lessers, and friendship is no different. O to be king! I won't deny that my heart desires it. Nor that as David reveals himself to me, the thought comes unbidden that I deserve it. Then also, to see him in the fullness of his adulation, when the crowds acclaimed him as greater than Saul, in those moments my heart betrayed me in the pettiness of jealousy, for all men desire the praise of the people, and I am a man after all! No perfection, no flawless selflessness yet in this poor flesh. I see and desire, the longings of my undisciplined heart occasionally breaking forth into unlawful emotions, and hatred lurks beneath my love, always.

Therefore, I will walk in the chosen actions of love, the deliberate choices of self-giving, the discipline of it like a fasting, even as I nurture our friendship and fan the flames of my love for him. He is my friend, one for whom I will give all, to whom I have already given all. He will be king and I will pass into obscurity, serving him according to all his needs, making him greater and myself less, and in this submitting to the created purposes of God. That also there is the joy of our unified spirits is only the abundance of God's grace, a sign that there is joy in him to overflow into all things, that our future will be friendship, and that somewhere in the mysteries of these things is a communication of him. If this pleasure is mine, what will we posses in the future, when all the lowness of our natures are burnt away, when the oneness will be seen and understood, when the whole people of God will stand in their future redemption as one, all under the chosen head, in the pattern of my submission to David? Friendship reveals God, as all his works do, showing that God is love, that in unity there is a joy that surpasses what can be attained alone, that in knowing a person, we must first make ourselves known, and that God has prepared a deeper unity that our friendships here can only shadow, can only hint at. Unity, then, is our great desire, our great joy, our great pleasure, our great hope, and in the knitting, his abundance of love is seen.

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Jonathan's life is scattered throughout I Samuel
Read especially: I Samuel 13, 18

I use "conversation" in the older sense to mean "behavior or manner of living"