2. EVERLASTING LOVE

"How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!"

I have loved you, My people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to Myself. Jeremiah 31:3

Here we have an everlasting thought of God, "in the beginning, before ever the earth was." Believer, travel back in imagination to the ages of the past. Before the trance of eternity was broken by any visible manifestation of power—before one temple was erected in space, before one angel waved his wing, or one note was heard of seraph's song—when God inhabited alone these sublime solitudes—then there was a thought of you, and that thought was—Love!

Think of the sovereignty of that love. He says not, 'You have loved Me with your poor earthly love, therefore have I drawn you.' No, no! It is from nothing in you—no foreseen goodness on your part. Grace is the reason of all He has done—"God who is rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us." "I will have mercy," is His own declaration—on whom I will have mercy." "Jacob," (that cunning, scheming, crafty youth,) "I have loved."

Manasseh, (that miserable man who has defiled his crown, dishonored his throne, and deluged Jerusalem with blood,) "I have loved." That dying thief—fresh from a life of infamy, breathing out his blasphemies on a felon's cross—"I have loved." And why, let each of us ask, am I not a Cain or a Judas? Why am I not a wrecked and stranded vessel, like thousands before me? Here is the reason; "Yes, I have loved you." Before you had one thought of Me, yes, when your thoughts were those of hatred, rebellion, enmity—My thoughts towards you were thoughts of love!

And that Sovereign love, as it is from everlasting, so is it to everlasting—endless in duration—enduring as eternity. The love of the creature is but of yesterday—it may be gone tomorrow—dried like a summer-brook when most needed. But the love of God is fed from the glacier summits—the everlasting hills. We may estimate its intensity, when the Savior could utter regarding it such a prayer as this, "That the love with which You have loved Me, may be in them."

Oh, amid the often misgivings of my own doubting heart, with its frames and feelings vacillating as the shifting sand, let me delight to ponder this precious thought—the long line of unbroken love—every link love—connecting the eternity that is past with the eternity to come—God thinking of me before the birth of time—even then mapping out all my future happiness and heavenly bliss—and standing now, with the hoarded love of that eternity in His heart, seeking therewith to "draw" me!

It is "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus"—the moral gravitation-power of the cross, by which His true people have ever been drawn. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." Draw me, Lord, and I will run after You. Show me Your loving-kindness thus enshrined and manifested in Your dear Son. Constrain me to love You in Him, because You have first loved, and so loved, me."

How priceless is Your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings. Psalm 36:7