Daily Manna · Day 5 · January 5
Drawn
“The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”
The people who first heard this sentence had lived through slaughter. Many of them were far from home, on land that was not theirs.
Jeremiah says so plainly one verse earlier: "The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness." That tells you who this message was for. It was sent to survivors of the sword, people torn from their homes and scattered among the nations that had defeated them. And they were told that God had loved them "with an everlasting love." Everlasting reaches backward as well as forward, so this love was there before the siege, before the idols, and before the sword. Then look at the verb: "with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Kindness draws a person gently, the way you lead someone by the hand. That is slower than dragging, and it is much harder to resist. Even so, the exile still lasted seventy years (29:10). Being loved did not cancel what their sin had brought on them. It changed who would be waiting for them at the far end of it.
You may have a room and a date of your own, the place where you decided God's love had ended. His love was already older than that room before you ever walked into it.
Do not try to answer this today. Do not solve it, write it down, or turn it into a plan. Stop where you are for two minutes and say nothing at all. His love was there long before you could answer it, and it does not need your answer now.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 5 is Truth in Love (Ephesians 4:15).