“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 Flame
God speaks this to a people who have genuinely, significantly drifted, and it is worth noticing what he chooses to remember first, not their current unfaithfulness, but the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, genuine, tender memory of an earlier, more devoted season, spoken with real fondness.
Notice wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown, love proven specifically in genuinely difficult circumstances, not comfortable ease but actual wilderness, unsown land, suggesting this early love was tested and real, not merely easy devotion offered only when circumstances made it effortless.
This is worth holding as genuine encouragement if your own current season feels far from whatever first love you once knew. God’s own remembering here is not bitter or accusatory. It is tender, kindness, love, genuinely treasured even while naming, in the surrounding verses, real concern about present drift.
Whatever season of genuine, wilderness-tested devotion you can remember in your own story, however distant it currently feels, receive today God’s own tender remembering of it as a genuine invitation, not nostalgia for something permanently lost, but memory worth actually returning to, the way this whole book will explore.
Tend the Flame
- Remember specifically a wilderness season when your own devotion was genuinely, actively tested.
- Receive God’s tender remembering of that season as invitation, not merely nostalgic loss.
- Consider what made that season’s love genuine, not merely easy or circumstantial.
Prayer
Lord, thank you for remembering the kindness of my youth, the love of my espousals, when I went after you even in the wilderness. Let this tender memory draw me back. Amen.
Carry this today
God remembers your early devotion tenderly, as invitation, not merely nostalgic loss.