Remembering First Love

2 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord,
                        “I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
                        how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
            3           Israel was holy to the Lord,
the firstfruits of his harvest.
                        All who ate of it incurred guilt;
disaster came upon them,
declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah 2:1-3
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Remembering First Love
Through Jeremiah, the Lord calls His people to remember their beginning, when they followed Him into the wilderness with trust and devotion. This early faith was not rooted in Israel’s strength but in the Lord’s gracious choosing. Israel belonged to Him, set apart as holy, not because they earned it, but because He claimed them as His own. That memory exposes the ache of our own hearts. We, too, forget our first love. We wander from the Lord who rescued us, fed us, and bore with us patiently. Yet the Lord does not simply scold; He remembers for us. He calls us back by recalling His faithfulness. That faithfulness reaches its fullest expression in the cross of Christ. There, the Lord binds Himself to an unfaithful people once and for all. Jesus bears our wandering, our forgetfulness, our broken love. In Him, the Lord still says: You are Mine. And in that gracious claim, we are brought home again.