Hemmed In

One of my readers sent me this reminder this morning...it too is one of my
favorites!

One of my favorites from Ransomed Heart: Hemmed In

Why did God curse Eve with loneliness and heartache, an emptiness that
nothing would be able to fill? Wasn't her life going to be hard enough out
there in the world, banished from the Garden that was her true home, her
only home, never able to return? It seems unkind. Cruel, even.

He did it to save her. For as we all know personally, something in Eve's
heart shifted at the fall. Something sent its roots down deep into her soul
- and ours - that mistrust of God's heart, that resolution to find life on
our own terms. So God has to thwart her. In love, he has to block her
attempts until, wounded and aching; she turns to him and him alone for her
rescue.

Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes;
I will wall her in so she cannot find her way.
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Hosea 2:6-7

Jesus has to thwart us too - thwart our self-redemptive plans, our
controlling and our hiding, thwart the ways we are seeking to fill the ache
within us. Otherwise, we would never fully turn to him for our rescue. Oh,
we might turn to him for our "salvation," for a ticket to heaven when we
die. We might turn to him even in the form of Christian service, regular
church attendance, a moral life. But inside, our heart remains broken and
captive and far from the One who can help us.

And so you will see the gentle, firm hand of God in a woman's life hemming
her in. Wherever it is we have sought life apart from him, he disrupts our
plans, our "way of life" which is not life at all.