To be ruined for everything else but Jesus has become my great longing. When I was a young man I surely longed to love Him more, but those desires were often second place to other longings like anointing, success, and happiness. Those desires had some good stuff in them, but were also filled with unholy mixture. One of my great hero’s and mentors in scripture is Mary Magdalene. The first time she met Jesus she was so smitten by the love of Christ that she was ruined forever for anything other than His presence, beauty, and affection. Jesus declared about her, in that first encounter, that she loved Him MUCH. Like Isaiah’s experience in the presence of the glory and beauty of Jesus, recorded in Isaiah 6, she was ruined forever as she encountered His beauty. This is what I so long for in my own life, to stay in His presence until His radiance and grace so ravish me that I am ruined forever. In John 16:32 Jesus tells His disciples that they would all be scattered each to his own home, leaving Him alone, but there was one person who couldn’t stay away. On Easter morning Mary rose early to go to the tomb, and finding it empty she ran and reported it to Peter and John. The three of them ran back to the tomb, and having discovered what she had reported was true, they went back to their homes. Mary Magdalene didn’t leave, instead she stayed and was the first to encounter the Risen Christ. When He spoke her name she fell once again at the feet of the Lover of her Soul, and clung to Him, as if nothing else mattered but His nearness. Why did she stay when the others went back to their homes? I believe it was because He was her home. She was ruined for anything, and anyone but Him. She joyfully wasted her life on Him. She was enslaved by His love, captured, and captivated forever. Oh may I find His presence, His beauty, my true home. May His nearness be the passion, and pursuit of my life.
