Returning to Our First Love
Lenten Devotional Series Day 5. Today’s meditation comes from Revelation 2:1-7.
Nine years ago, I enjoyed a wonderful lunch with a beautiful woman. It was my first date with Laura, and before it was over I knew that I wanted to marry her. She took some wooing, but soon we were married. Now we are raising three young children, and we often laugh together about the chaos of our lives. There’s nothing romantic about housekeeping, especially with young kids. We spend countless hours cleaning up food messes, teaching manners, putting away toys, and working the bedtime routines. The mundane struggles of the daily grind carry with them the danger of calcifying our primary relationship with one another.
From the very beginning, there have been housekeeping duties required within the Christian faith. Protecting the purity of the Church is one of them. Sadly, by the late 1st C AD, the task of fighting heresy had come to define the church in Ephesus. Their passion for God was lacking, because they had expended all their energies fighting false doctrine. They had nothing left to give in love to the Lord Jesus, their first love, to whom they were betrothed.
Jesus affirms their housekeeping efforts. “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance… [You] have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.” But in so doing, they had neglected the most important thing. Jesus says, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” They had become spiritual crustaceans: tough external defenses, no internal fire.
Jesus’ warning to the dutiful Ephesians is sobering: “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (v 5). Time to rekindle the romance, lest the reason for all their housekeeping is forgotten forever.
The symbolism of the lampstand being removed is especially poignant. In the early days, the Ephesian church offered a vibrant public witness to the world around them as a result of their love for the Lord. An abiding, God-focused love is naturally manifest through the church to the neighborhoods, boroughs, and cities where Christians live. But the Ephesian Christians’ vocation as a lampstand in Asia minor was in jeopardy, because their love for God was waning. We run the same risk today. Purity is important. But the best defense is not a strong offense. The best defense is… a strong romance. They will know we are Christians by our love.
In prayer today, begin with the Collect of the Day (below). Then reflect on the areas of toil and patient endurance in your own life. Ask the Lord to help you see whether these good things have become ultimate things, and in so doing have muted your love for him. Ask him for a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit, so that you might return to your first love. Offer him your love: your heart, soul, mind and strength. Commit to worship him today as a living sacrifice. Then conclude with the Lord’s Prayer.
The Collect of the Day. O Lord, for our sake you fasted forty days and forty nights: give us grace so to deny ourselves that our flesh may become subdued to your Spirit, and that we may always obey your divine will in righteousness and true holiness, to your honor and glory; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.