Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 130 · May 10
First Love
“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”
We know a church that works. The rota is filled, the accounts balance, the doctrine is sound, and something has gone out of the room that nobody can name in a meeting.
Ephesus gets the longest commendation of the seven. I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars. Then, in case the point about stamina is missed: and hast not fainted. Hard-working, discerning, durable.
Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Left is a walking word, and it is in the past tense. The thing has already happened.
God is the one carrying the memory of how it used to be. Jeremiah was sent to a city with a message that reads like a man opening an old letter: I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. The years with nothing to eat and no reason to stay are the years he keeps.
The remedy is oddly unspiritual. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works. Whatever you did in the first year, the visiting, the giving, the praying that had no method to it, do that again while you feel nothing. Then the sentence nobody quotes: or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place.
That happened. There is no church at Ephesus now, and has not been for many centuries; the harbour silted and the city was left to the marsh. This is a grief before it is a lesson, and the grief is his.
What were you doing in the first year that is not in your diary this month, and can you name the year it stopped?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 130 is Strength and Shield (Psalm 28:7).