I sat with jewelry pliers to my left, wire and beads to my right.  I strung bead after bead onto memory wire.  I grabbed for a small, oval, light blue bead.  It escaped my grip and slid out of sight between some other beads.  I grabbed again, trying to be more intentional this time, but it slipped again.  Around the fourth attempt I thought about giving up and just grabbing another bead (after all, there is no pattern to the bracelets that I make) but I didn't.  I kept going after that single blue bead that had caught my eye until I finally plucked it out of the container and slid it onto the wire.

Isn't this what happens when God pursues us?  Only so much better.  See, I almost gave up on the little blue bead, I almost settled for something different and just forgot about it until perhaps I came across it again later.  But God, he pursues us over and over and over, constantly until we are His and His alone.  He reaches down and grabs at us to pull us into His love and His embrace so that we may live at peace in Jesus. But how many times do we slip away and hide in whatever crowd we can blend into?  How often do we (believers or not) move to the right or to the left to avoid what God has for us because it might be too hard, or scary or uncomfortable or impossible in our eyes. 

For those of you who are not believers, that scary, uncomfortable place is at the cross... it is meeting Jesus right where He died for you so that you could live forever!  And what an uncomfortable place it is to be at first... but once you receive it, it is breathtakingly, beautifully perfect.

For those of us who are believers, we can probably count on our fingers and toes and multiply that by 674 and still not reach the number of times we have slipped away from the spirit's leading or God's grace after we have fallen to that same nagging temptation.

Whatever our position is, we can find comfort in knowing that God longs after us the way I longed after that bead.  I wanted so badly to have that small blue bead to put on the bracelet to make it complete.  In the same way, God so desperately wants to have us and delights in us as His children.  He will pursue us time and time again, in places you least expect it.

Let's open our eyes, ears and hearts and slip a bit less from God's grasp while running a bit more down the path He has created for us.