The Great Betrothal

Anyone who has been in any sort of relationship has asked this question: How many times can I mess up before they give up on me? In our minds we put a number to it, and most times we give up on ourselves before the people we love even get the chance. We don't expect forgiveness and so we don't ask for it. As humans, there is a limit to how much forgiveness we can give. Unconditional love is a nice idea, but none of us are capable of it. We try our best to equate anything we have on earth to it but fall short every time. Even a mother will turn away a son and a wife will divorce a Husband if their limit is reached. There is nothing here on earth that is able to give us the unconditional love we crave, so we look beyond the earth, to God. God is unlimited and his love is truly unconditional. There is not a number assigned to how many mistakes you can make until he gives up on you. There is not a restriction to how much forgiveness he has for you and there is not a limit to how many people he will forgive. In the Bible, God tries to explain this in the context of marriage. He calls himself the bridegroom and us, the church, the bride. He calls us unfaithful and adulterous and rightly so. Many people who have been married have left their spouse for being unfaithful and no one really blames them for it. But if God is our bridegroom and WE are the unfaithful spouse, how many times can we be unfaithful before He leaves us and nobody will blame him? What does that say about what we are expected to endure from the ones we love?