August 19-20 – When did you know?

“Though I have the gift of prophecy and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling symbol....now abideth faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love”. 1 Corinthians 13:

Recently friends and I have been discussing relationships, you know, how they came about, developed, and came to the place they're at today. The responses were really interesting. They went from “they were the friend of a friend and we became one of the group” to “a work colleague“ to “we met at....” to “we were introduced”. But when asked the question, “When did you first know that you loved them”? They became far more vague in their responses. Some could recall a defining moment, but in most cases love sort of crept up on them as they discovered more and more things in common – it was the friendship that came first, until one day something happened and they came face to face with the knowledge that they loved this person. In common was the fact that with the acceptance of the feelings of love, came the need to make a decision regarding the way ahead.

These responses struck me as being so like our Christian walk. How did we come to have a relationship with God? Did it just creep up on us, or were we introduced to Him by a friend? Was there a tragedy in our lives, or with our loved ones that brought us to reach out for help? When did we come face to face with the knowledge that we loved the Lord and accepted His sacrifice for us? I'm sure our responses will differ widely, but I'm sure the one thing we will have in common is that once we accepted our feelings, we knew we had to do something about it.

Like many of you I was blessed in that I grew up with the Lord from before birth – we can testify to the truth of Psalm 139, 'before I was formed in the womb He knew me, He could count the number of hairs on my head'. He has always been there for me – a constant friend. Ask me to define the moment that I knew I loved Him, and I would have no idea – we sort of grew into each other, then the day of decision came.

What is your experience? When did you know? As important, what have you done about it?

When looking for a song to go with this blog I came across a video by The Gaithers. This aptly expresses our search, whether the love may be human, or divine.

Click on the picture to listen to “When Did I Start To Love You”?.