Proverbs 3:3 "Let not loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them about your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart."

It is interesting the way this is phrased - "Let not loyalty ... forsake you" - as if loyalty could be disloyal! While loyalty cannot be disloyal, we certainly can! We know it is good to be loyal and faithful, but we can be, and often are, tempted to be disloyal and unfaithful. As with every other misstep, in the moment, we do not think of the fact we are breaking our commitment to loyalty. Whatever we are giving it up for seems so much more important, so much more pleasurable, or necessary, that we forget about or deny loyalty. When we look back on these times, we feel shame, and cast around for something or someone else to blame, because we are so sure we would not have forsaken loyalty so easily. That is how we can come to blame even loyalty itself for our failures, thinking it left us when we needed it the most.

But if we take the advice of the proverb and write loyalty and faithfulness on our hearts, and bind them to our necks, we will not be able to abandon them easily. They will be so much a part of who we are, that when the temptation comes to deny them, we would have to give up an integral part of ourselves to do so.