He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not...

By Hazel Holland  

 "He loves me...he loves me not...he loves me...he loves me not..."

Do you remember making daisy chains when you were a child?  I sure do. It was fun picking the daisies and seeing who could make the longest chain.  The first daisy we counted was always "He loves me!"  The second daisy was "He loves me not!"  The third daisy was "He loves me!"... and so on until we got to the end of the daisy chain. I remember the excitement and tension we felt as we finished threading our last daisy into the chain... What were the odds that we had picked the "right" number of flowers so that the last daisy would be "He loves me"? 

Yesterday, when God brought back this childhood memory to my mind and told me that this "daisy chain" is a picture of the church today, I began to weep.  This is a picture of many of us in the body of Christ who do not want to let go of the old covenant!  So we do our best to "weave" both the new and the old covenants together.  It's like we're still children, content to play our childish games instead of leaving the "shadows" of childhood behind us... forever.

Trouble is... playing "daisy chains" with the covenants to see how we fare in our relationship with God gives us a distorted picture of His love and grace.  Not only that, but it leaves us in a world of contradictions and confusion.  One minute we're loved, and the next we're not.  One minute salvation is a free gift, and the next it's not.  One minute we're forgiven, and the next we're not.  We catch a glimpse of the Father's heart of love for us, and then suddenly we nose-dive into a world of fear and condemnation.

It's time to leave this childish guessing game behind us.  It's become obsolete.  The old has gone and the new has come!  It's time to grow up into who we are in Jesus Christ, and embrace the truth that "He loves me...always!"