Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 130 · May 10
First Love
“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”
We all know a church that runs well. The schedule is full, the accounts balance and the teaching is sound. Yet something has gone out of the room, and nobody can name it in a meeting.
Ephesus receives warm praise from the Lord: "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 anyone missed the point about staying power, He adds, "and hast not fainted." This was a hard-working church, alert to false teaching, and it had lasted.
Then He says, "Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love." To leave something here means to let it go, and Jesus speaks of it as already done.
God is the one who carries the memory of how it used to be. Jeremiah was sent to Jerusalem with a message that reads like someone 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." Those were the hard years in the desert, with nothing growing and every reason to turn back, and they are the years God treasures.
The cure Jesus gives is surprisingly ordinary: "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works." Whatever you did in those early days, do it again, even while you feel nothing: the visiting, the giving, and the praying that had no method to it. Then comes the part people rarely quote: "or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place."
That is what happened. There has been no church at Ephesus for many centuries. Its harbour filled with silt, and the city was left to the marsh. This is a sorrow before it is a lesson, and it is Christ's own sorrow.
So what were you doing in your first year with Him that is no longer part of your weeks? Can you remember when it stopped? Bring that honest answer to Him, because the One who warned Ephesus also made it a promise: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." He still remembers your first love, and He is calling you back to it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 130 is Strength and Shield (Psalm 28:7).