Travel back in imagination to the beginning, before one heavenly body was erected in space, to when time began and God inhabited sublime solitude alone. Realize that even then His thought was of you and that His thought was love! Our verse was directed to Israel, but we can apply it to ourselves with profit.

Think of the sovereignty of God’s love. He does not draw us because of anything in us, not on account of our poor earthly love nor any foreseen goodness on our part. Grace is the reason for all He has done. His love from the beginning was an endless love. The love of the creature was here yesterday and may be gone tomorrow, but the love of God will never cease.

Oh, amid the many misgivings of our doubting hearts, with their shifting feelings, let us delight to ponder this precious thought: there is a long line of unbroken love connecting the past with the eternity that is to come. Let us meditate on the wonderful fact that at the very beginning, God was even then mapping out all our future happiness and heavenly bliss, and was thinking about wherewith He would “draw” us! He draws us by the moral power of the cross: “‘I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (Jn. 12:32–33). In the coming ages, He will “show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). Let us all say, “Draw me Lord, and I will run after You. Show Your lovingkindness thus enshrined and manifested in Your dear Son. Constrain me to love Him and You, because You have first loved, and so loved, me.”