“I remember you,
The kindness of your youth,
The love of your betrothal,
When you went after Me in the wilderness,
In a land not sown.” - Jeremiah 2.2, NKJV
As I was able to get some extra sleep this morning, and have a busy day at church today for Good Friday, I had the energy to really meditate on this verse from “the weeping prophet”. Though I have been putting one foot in front of the other, I have noticed a lacklustre to my passion for God. Though I still apply my faith to what I believe is the best of my ability, I remember the early years of my conversion. I remember going to church on Good Friday and feeling so overcome by emotion from the reading that I would tear up. Now that I am a seasoned Christian, someone who has made all the evangelical mistakes of youth and is now well fed on the meat of mature theology, I wonder if I will ever be so moved by emotion and love for God the way I once was.
But in my meditation, I realized that it’s not always about my feelings: sometimes it’s simply one day at a time, continuing to do what is right, and to resist what is harmful. I also suspect that we get what we give, and as I have gained a small amount of success in the secular world, I have divided my attention between scripture and other things. I am also adding self-compassion into this as well, as I stumbled and fell quite hard as a baby Christian, over-zealous which was driven by fear and misunderstanding. I am realizing that I didn’t really pick myself back up after that.
Now as I find myself with less time and sleep in this post-pandemic reality I have landed in, I have ultimately concluded that I need to contribute to my own passion - I need to put the time in if I want to have an effect of labour. In order to reap, I must sow. While I am grateful that I humbled myself enough to turn to others for information and inspiration, I need to go within, go to where the Spirit dwells, in order to draw from that life-giving water that I enjoyed many years ago.
As a fear-driven person, I thought that avoidance was the solution, but really, it only compounds the problem of lackadaisically fumbling through life, and the diminishing returns of that existence. I am entering a new season of faith, of trusting that I will not lose what I have gained, and that I will attain what I am working toward; of having the confidence that I have learned balance, true love, and purpose, and that I am prepared to go out and live my life, in abundance.