JESUS IS CHASING YOU?

In God’s perfect world, it was not an office, not a factory, not a sports arena, but a garden where God placed man, his most cherished creation. God’s ideal setting for a pursuing a love relationship with man, was a garden.

He created man naked and unashamed.
Intimacy comes, when we know we are loved, just as we are,
there is no shame, no need to perform, no need to hide,
(no fig leaves required).

In the cool of the day God would come down to be with Adam, where Adam was, the garden, and walk with him. God comes again, one day but this day Adam and Eve have sinned and they are hiding. God said, “Adam where are you?” Since that day of separation, when man was removed from the garden, man now says, "God, where are you?”

In our post modern, post industrial, information age, we have trouble seeing God as the Divine suitor in a sacred romance. Ohh! We can see him as a boss, a judge, an absentee landlord, a policeman, some can see Him as a teacher, a doctor, maybe others see a savior, a deliverer, a resource, a higher power, few may even picture Him as a friend. But do we see him as our lover? Comparing God to a romantic lover makes most of us uncomfortable.

While we accept that He is the author and finisher of our faith, we forget that He is also the Creator, the author and finisher of all aspects of human intimacy, physical, emotional and spiritual. This same God inspired Paul the apostle to compare these two; marriage and the church with Christ, as Paul was writing about husbands and wives becoming one flesh, he says,

“For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. (quoted from Gen. 2:24)
This mystery is very great, but I speak concerning the relation of Christ and the church.”(Ephesians 5:31, 32)

Close your eyes, with me, for a moment, try to picture this;
Jesus, is chasing a woman, she is the object of his affection, through the mall shopping, He chases her, store after store, as she stops for lunch with friends, makes phone calls, takes in a movie, stands in line at Starbucks?

There He is! Did you see Him? He is standing, right on the edge of the crowd. He is waiting, watching for his (promised) bride, to turn around and recognize Him, to throw her arms around him and embrace him. If we could hear his thoughts, they would be insistent, “come away, come away with me, my love.

The Lord of Glory, so brilliant is His countenance, it surpasses the brilliance of the noonday sun! 
This noonday sun itself pales to shades of gray in his presence. 
Yet, He waits, for Her! 
Does anybody in the crowd gathered there see him? Can you see him?

Close your eyes once again. Imagine.
Now, you are the woman, rushing your way through your daily routine of busyness?
He is running behind your car, as you race off to work, a quick stop by the dry cleaners and on to the job, oops, fill up the tank, grab a coffee and get back on the road.

Arriving at your office, He watches as endless meaningless tasks consume all your thoughts, off to lunch, fruitless conversations, then more tasks. Get the kids from school, grab a few groceries on the way home...

Ahh! Home at last! Flip on the tube, catch the news and relax, for a couple of minutes before supper? Then clean up, dishes, pay the bills, kiss the kids goodnight make, a late night trip to Wal-Mart and the video rental outlet, back home in time to drop into bed.

Tomorrow is another day.

Jesus is still waiting, can you hear him? Martha? Martha where are you?

Like Martha are you distracted, busy, worrying, about many things? Only one thing is needful, to sit at his feet to embrace him, let him kiss you with the kisses of his mouth. Mary kept finding herself at his feet.

Do you have eyes for Him? Can the eyes of your heart, capture and process that brilliant spectrum of light? Is his dazzling beauty lost on you?
Are you blinded by the glare of lesser lights?
Like looking at a welding torch without protection? Have the sparks of man-made lights damaged your ability to see?
Do you have difficulty comprehending things not tangible?
Could you see Him among the crowd pursuing you, as your passionate lover?

Hollywood paints distorted pictures. Computer animation and special effects allow Hollywood to create other “savior’s”, from Superman to King Arthur. They ascribe the attributes of God to His creation, redirecting worship from the Creator, to the creation, With flickering light and shadow, they dull our ability to comprehend the magic and mystery of the living God, in the process of satisfying the human longing for a god. “Leaving the fountain of living waters; to build broken cisterns that cannot hold water”. (Jeremiah)

Unsurpassed in beauty, unequaled in strength, faithful, and true, gentle, and pure, He is our knight in shining armor, the only hero in our tale, our defense, our high tower our kinsman redeemer.
He offers us everlasting life, the only ‘true’ version of living ‘happily ever after.’

I remember a hymn we used to sing when I was a child. It paints a picture of this intimacy I have been trying to describe.

“I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses,
and the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses

And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me, I am his own,
and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

Man was made to bring God pleasure, for touching God.
God’s idea was to meet man in the garden (places of life) in the ‘cool’ of the day.
No wonder we all have an inner tug for leisurely strolls in the ‘garden’ places, with the ones we love. Whether that place is as cultivated as a formal English garden, as rough as the mountains, as random as a cascading stream, or as expansive as the shifting seashore.  We have been made in His image and so we too have that ideal written on our hearts. He meets his love in the lonely garden places of life.

We too long to steal away from the crowd with the one we love, to share a moment of expressed love a kiss, an embrace, a tender words of love.

The following passage may embarrass you, it is bold and unabashed in its expression of passion.

He becomes the center as we linger in the garden places - Excerpts from Song of Solomon

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, (turning to the king )for your love is better than wine.

I have come into my garden, my sister, my (promised) bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my balsam and spice from your sweet words I have gathered the richest perfumes and spices. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, feast on, O revelers of the palace; you can never make my lover disloyal to me!

Drink! Yes drink abundantly of love, O precious one for now I know you are mine, irrevocably mine! With his confident words still thrilling her heart, through the lattice she saw her shepherd turn away and disappear into the night.

I went to sleep, but my heart stayed awake. I dreamed that I heard the voice of my beloved as he knocked, at the door of my mother’s cottage. Open to me , my sister, my love, my dove, my spotless one, he said for I am wet with the heavy night dew; my hair is covered with it. But weary from a day in the vineyards, I had already sought my rest, I had put off my garment---how could I again put it on? I had washed my feet—how could I again soil them?

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my heart was moved for him. I rose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, and my fingers with liquid myrrh which he had left on the handles of the bolt.

I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and withdrawn himself, and was gone! My soul went forth, to him when He spoke, but it failed me and now He was gone! I sought Him but I could not find Him: I called Him but he gave me no answer.

The watchman who go about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil and my mantle from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am sick from love, simply sick to be with him...

Where has your beloved gone, O fairest among women? ... Where is your beloved hiding himself? For we would seek him with you. She replied, My Beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s garden and my beloved is mine! He feeds among the lilies which grow there.....

Set me like a seal upon your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as hard and cruel as sheol. It’s flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame the very flame of the Lord.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would offer all the goods of his house, for love he would be utterly scorned and despised.