What is it that rises up in me each morning to make me want to write?  The deep love of Jesus, the kind of love that makes no earthly sense at all.  It’s mid-morning, and I haven’t written anything yet because I haven’t stopped worshipping the One who loved an outcast.  I wasn’t a cute little orphan girl, all dressed up and on good behavior.  I was filthy and undesirable.  

It’s been hard to see myself that way since I was raised in a respectable, church-going family.  Childhood pictures reveal Easter Sundays with new dresses, patent leather shoes, and white gloves. My presumed goodness begs to get in the way of seeing myself as depraved, needing a Savior.  

But 2023 has been a year of deep change.  I’m understanding the Lover, and the context of being lost – and then being rescued.  I took a long look at Ezekiel 16 this morning.

On the day that you were born, your umbilical cord was not cut, you weren’t bathed and cleaned up, you weren’t rubbed with salt, you weren’t wrapped in a baby blanket.  No one cared for you.  No one did one thing to care for you tenderly in these ways.  You were thrown out into a vacant lot and left there, dirty and unwashed – a newborn nobody wanted.  And then I came by.  I saw you all miserable and bloody.  I said to you, lying there and helpless and filthy, “Live!”  I took care of you, dressed you, and protected you.  I promised you my love and entered the covenant of marriage with you.  I, God, the Master, gave my word.  You became mine.  Ezekiel 16  THE MESSAGE

The ‘field’ is Satan’s ‘field of the unwanted’.  Newborns aren’t treasured in his wasteland of a kingdom.  He just doesn’t want God to have them.  They are dirty trophies, uncared for, bloody, un-swaddled, and languishing.  He will raise them on filth, a degrading kind of diet for those who will never know one moment of nurturing until they are rescued by LOVE.

Look at the intervention.  God saw the births.  Saw the discarded newborns, unable to do one thing for themselves.  Their umbilical cords were still uncut, and rotting.  His reaction was not revulsion, it was compassion.  He spread His cloak over them, wrapped them up, and called them His.  “Live!”He said.  

This is the Gospel.  These were my beginnings.  God did it all.  Unless I embrace the truth of who I once was, I will never know the depth of His love.  And I will never respond with the depth of love that is possible for me to feel, and then to express in worship.  This is what it is to be a Daughter of Promise.