Before they were married, the young couple, so deeply in love, couldn’t sit close enough to each other when riding in his car. Now, driving down the road over twenty-five years later, his wife sits against the passenger door. She seems pensive as she stares out the window. It is as though something is bothering her, but she can’t find words to express her feelings. From time to time she glances at her husband, begins to say something, but then lapses into silence. Finally, with a deep, longing sigh, she turns to her husband, saying, “Do you remember those days when we used to sit so close to each other that we looked like a two-headed driver? What’s happened?”
He glances back at her with a look of love that has grown deeper over the years. Then, with a sad smile, the answer comes back, “Yes, I do remember, honey. But I’m not the one who moved.”
Can’t we hear our Saviour’s loving rebuke to our hearts today? Are our hearts stirred by His blessed voice lovingly rebuking us: “I’ve not moved. I am still the same yesterday, today and forever. You’ve moved from Me, and I feel it far more deeply than you.”
Our lives today are so full of bustling, rushing, demanding tasks that we rarely have time to enjoy communion with Christ. The green grass and “still waters” of fellowship with Him are lost to us in the hurried pace of the necessities of everyday life.
As daily individual time with the Lord is crowded out, time to gather together around Him in the midst with those that have “obtained like precious faith” is also pushed aside. The practical result is that we forsake “the assembling of ourselves together” (Heb. 10:2525Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25)).
The furious pace of this technologically advanced world exacts a terrible price—private, individual time with the Lord Jesus, precious time gathered together with those of His beloved people for prayer and reading of His Word, and even the precious and all-too-short time that parents have to mold and train their children for Christ (Prov. 22:66Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)). What a cost!
Most of all, however, our precious Saviour, who “loved His own which were in the world” (John 13:11Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13:1)) and who “gave Himself for us” (Titus 2:1414Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:14)), feels our waning affections. It is what brought that loving yet solemn rebuke to the Ephesian believers. They were outwardly going on well, apparently faithful, involved and active in the life of faith. Yet something was lacking—their personal love for Himself had diminished, and He felt it very deeply.
He didn’t move away from them, for His love is the same—divine, eternal, never changing. But they had moved away from Him.
Personal communion with and enjoyment of the blessed Lord Jesus is the necessary, vital spring of our Christian life and joy. Satan will do everything in His power to hinder or stop that flow of fellowship.
Ed.