The Far Away Lover

We get the privilege of visiting many primary and high schools in Kenya every year with the Diguna school ministry. We also get the opportunity to interact with teens during our youth camps every school holiday. It is always fun to see friends from previous camps and to make new friends among the newcomers. It is so exciting sometimes that some people end up in romantic relationships, as advisable or inadvisable as that may be. Then there are the obvious challenges to these fledgling relationships such as distance and the expense of calling, although calling rates in Kenya are pretty low at the moment. Anything that is fed grows while that which is starved dies. It is common to see two young people begin a relationship and then end it soon after, not due to any misunderstanding but due to the distance reason. The interesting thing with God is that He also can’t stand long distance relationships. He wants to be so near to us that He sent Himself in the person of the Son to live a completely perfect and sinless life among the race He created to love and be loved by Him, the human race.

 

One thing I have never seen being referred to fondly is the issue of distance from or absence of one’s close companion in life. God desires intimate, close, well-defined and exclusive relationship with me. He doesn’t want part of me, He wants all. Whenever the people of God were unfaithful in the Old Testament, the imagery used to describe their lack of commitment had to do with romantic liaison. God always has been a jealous God, one who desires our complete devotion to Him. He is, however, not only one who desires our affection; He is also the greatest Lover of all time. The love He offers is well demonstrated in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a love that gives of itself so fully that the only reasonable response is to accept it. Whenever I make an invitation to people to begin a conscious, intense and meaningful relationship with Jesus, I tell them that the option of not accepting Jesus is too terrible to mention, so I suggest that one either accepts this love, or one accepts this love. The other option is not one I would suggest to anyone.