I've been learning about love lately. Not Lindsey Lohan's sappy: "Can't eat, can't sleep, over the fence, world series kind of love." If you know me then you know I am not one of those girls who dreams about romance and imagines their perfect wedding or anything like that. My favorite Taylor Swift song is the realistic one, White Horse, which says: "I'm not a princess, this aint a fairytale, I'm not the one you sweep off her feet lead her up the stair-well, this aint Hollywood…" But I have been learning about love- more of the "Pick Me. Choose Me. Love Me." kind of love that involves fighting for your heart. Every time I hear a sermon or a talk or read a passage about God trying to get us to make Him first in our hearts I hear that Grey's Anatomy quote ringing in my head… and a lot of the time I catch myself quoting it out loud. Ooops, embarrassing…
So I've been thinking about love and as I was reading some scripture the other day some heartbreak jumped off the page at me. In John 1 the Pharisees, the Jews of Jerusalem, the Priests and the Levites have been looking for the Messiah and yearning for Him and waiting for Him for an incredibly long period of time. So when John the Baptist showed up they got incredibly excited. They thought that this was finally it! This was finally the guy! God was finally here to save them and make the world a perfect and joyous place and make all of their years of suffering worth it! But they were wrong. And they were heartbroken. They gathered together, got all excited, sought out John the Baptist, searched for him, found him, met him, talked to him and got let down. He was just preparing the way, he wasn't the Christ. Can you imagine the heartbreak of that kind of let down?
So it got me thinking, where would their hearts be after that? Maybe a little hurt, prideful, wounded, bitter, sad or damaged? Ya, I've been there, I get it. It makes a little bit more sense to me now why they were so reluctant to accept Jesus as the Messiah… and then He got all radial and started doing crazy things that tested their faith and commitment and they totally gave up on Him. I always wondered why they didn' immediately embrace Him with open arms… Maybe there were heartbroken, wounded and scare to get hurt all over again. They were just human. It doesn't justify their actions but it does change my perspective a little bit.
What I think is even more interesting though is what happens next in John 4. After this little episode with John the Baptists Jesus shows up and starts teaching and gaining some popularity and the Pharisees hear about it. And when Jesus finds out that they have heard about Him He runs away. The very people who rule the religion, who are searching for the Christ, who want to praise Him- these are the ones the Jesus flees from. And where does He go? He seeks out a woman who in her heart is searching desperately for purpose, security and fulfillment but doesn't know where to find it. He goes to a woman who, even is she had ever heard of Jesus, would never have thought that she had a chance of gaining His favor or salvation. A woman who saw herself the way all of the other women in her society saw her- a despicable, dirty Samaritan woman.
So Jesus found Her. He sought her out. He pursued her.
I was looking for love without even knowing it. Whenever I share my testimony I try to emphasize that aspect with people- I was depressed, lonely and hurting myself, feeling ostracized and isolated but I never thought there was a way out and I wasn't looking for an escape. I didn't think there was any hope. Just like the Samaritan woman at the well, whenever people tried to talk to me about God i got sassy and didn't believe He could be real. Just like her I threw contradicting facts in their faces and mocked them. And just like her, God found me one day, when I was all alone and no one was around. And He was the only One who could have convinced women like us that He was real and that we could have a relationship with Him. He was the only one that could have saved us. It blows my mind that when Jesus could have had the love and praise of devout men of power and authority that He wanted the hearts of women like us. He picked me, He chose me, He loves me. Yayyy for fairytale endings.
