ON THE VANGUARD

SECRET CRUSHES
“From a distance Adonai appeared to me, [saying,] ‘I love you with an everlasting love; this is why in my grace I draw you to me.’”
Jeremiah 31:3 CJB

Alright, I am about to let you enter into the deep depths of my childhood love life. I know, you’re both excited and scared, right? Well rather than taking you all the way back to my flirty age of 5, I will rest my travels in my college days. Many times growing up it seemed as though my sister and I would bump heads – literally. One time I actually hit her in the head with a wooden baseball bat. And then there was the time I sprained her arm playing dodgeball. And then…, well you get the point. Anyway, dad would always discipline me and leave the conversation with, “One day you’re going to be glad you have a sister because she is going to have cute friends.” I always shrugged the comment off, knowing that she was four years younger than I, and that seemed like too much of a gap in age.
Then it happened. I came home from college one summer with the intent of making a few bucks and working on my senior paper as opposed to going on a mission trip. Nothing seemed different. My family was still strange yet fun to be around, church was still the same, and my old friends from high school still were single like me. Life picked up from where it left off. Except, my sister’s friend had grown up. I had just been home the winter before and she was still a kid, but now? Now I found myself looking for excuses to be around my sister and her friend. Now I was the willing taxi driver to wherever they needed to go. Now I was offering to use my money to pay for my sister and her friend. What came over me? I began to have a secret crush on her.
I write this story, knowing that my family is going to try hard to figure out who it was, if they don’t already know, because it reminds me of how God sees me. Granted I was never the ugly cousin or the buck toothed kid in His eyes, but there came a point where I was looked at by God with eyes of love. There came a point in which I mattered to Him. He began to have feelings for me. He began to woo me from a distance, unbeknownst to me, because He had a crush on me. Little by little He began to flirt, to offer me something, and to make promises that He did keep. As Jeremiah heard God say over Israel, so God was saying over me. “I love you with an everlasting love; this is why in my grace I draw you to me.”
I think these words are words we all need to hear. As a divorced dad, raising two children mostly alone, with no real time for dating it seems, I find myself alone often. Yet recently I have been comforted, not by a woman, but rather by God. I have heard in the underlining tone of friends’ counsel just what is recorded in Jeremiah 31:3. And this is my strength. The knowledge of the fact that God is wooing me, that He has a crush on me, is a joy that cannot be explained. Yet it is a joy I want you to be aware of also. I don’t know your situation, whether you’re having marriage problems or not, whether abuse is rampant in your relationships, or whether you are trying to fill the void in your heart with anything that comes passing by. But I do know this. God is so in love with you! God sees the pain you feel and He wants to be the one that takes care of you. God is admitting to you, coming out of the secret and confessing to you His love. Hear His words for they are for you. “I love you with an everlasting love; this is why in my grace I draw you to me.”