Judith looked up at the stranger approaching her table. He looked familiar. She had seen him a few times around campus before. This time he was smiling at her again but unlike before, now he stopped and spoke to her.
“May I sit with you at your table ma’am?”
Judith squinted up at him. He had a funny accent; it sounded almost like middle Eastern kind of words.
She shrugged, indicating that he could sit at her table if he wanted.
She could actually care less if he did or not. She was lost in thoughts. Her boyfriend of 4 years had jilted her two weeks ago. The pain still ran deep and true.
The stranger sat at her table and ordered sandwiches and pizza.
When the waiter brought the order and he passed the pizza to her, her eyes couldn’t resist lighting up at the order. And he ordered her very favourite flavour too. How did he know?
This time she really looked at him.
Pizza broke the ice.
He started to talk.
He had a funny way of looking right into her eyes as he spoke.
“Ruel… who hurt you?”
She almost choked on her pizza. What did he call her?
Ruel?
How did he know that name?
No one had ever known that name except her mom and her mom had been dead for 15 years now.
“Excuse me… what did you call me?”
“Ruel.. he replied. Isn’t that your mom’s nickname for you? The one she gave you because you always acted like a squirrel picking up her things to school….”
His lips cranked up in a smile.
He continued: “she is doing fine by the way… she misses you”.
Judith temporarily forgot that this guy wasn’t supposed to know anything about her as the pain doubled over in her heart.
Her mom was the only one she had ever been able to open her heart to and confide in. Since Phil jilted her, she had not even been able to tell anyone about it. Sometimes it felt like her heart would literally explode from the pain.
The stranger moved closer as he saw the tears brim in her eyes. She looked up at him. He had the most tender expression she had ever seen on anyone’s face ever.
He looked at her like he could see her. Like she mattered. She had not felt like she mattered in a very long time.
His tenderness broke her. Now she couldn’t even hold the tears. Her control was absolutely gone and it frustrated her.
He just sat there holding her hand in the palm of his own hands. She looked up at him and saw that he also had tears in his own eyes. His sandwich was forgotten and the look on his face was one that looked as though she was the most important thing to him in the entire world.
Who was this guy?
She badly needed comfort and so the thoughts of who he was was becoming increasingly dim.
He opened his mouth to speak again.
“Ruel I have been watching you. Why have you rejected me for so long?”
“I have been watching you”. He said again.
“I love you more than Phil could ever have loved you. He could never have given you the love you deserve anyway; I had to let him go”.
The only words that came out of her mouth was “who are you?”
He merely looked at her and cradled her cheek so tenderly in his hands. His eyes were still fixed on hers.
As soon as his fingers touched her face, she saw.
All of a sudden she was translated back in time to a place she couldn’t recognize. She saw a woman weeping at the foot of a cross. There was much sorrow on the woman’s face.
The agony on her face was hard to bear. She looked away from the woman to her right and saw still other women, huddled around her in pain and tears.
They all seemed to be looking upwards.
Judith raised her head up from them and looked and at the exact moment she looked she saw a soldier pierce the side of a man hung on a cross with a spear.
Immediately blood and water gushed out from his side and suddenly she knew.
“Jesus”.
She didn’t know that she said it out loud till she found herself back at the campus cafeteria table with the stranger still looking at her with the tender look in his eyes.
She couldn’t utter a word.
He removed his hands from the curve of her face and held her left hand in his.
His fingers circled her left marriage ring finger.
He lifted up her finger and kissed her hand so tenderly.
“Phil gave you a ring; I knew when and where he bought it from. It was 300 dollars. It was purchased on sale from a jewellery store right at the back of his apartment.
The woman you saw at first was my mother; Mary. My heart broke at her tears shed that so long ago day now.
The other women were Mary Magdalene the woman who I casted 7 demons out from and Mary, my mother’s sister, the wife of Clopas. It was agony to see them all cry when I knew that I could come down from the cross anytime I chose.
But there was someone for whose sake I couldn’t let my human will gain control.
When the soldiers pierced my side with a spear, my ring for you was made by my Father; a ring of blood
“I hung with arms wide open on that cross to let you know that my arms will always be wide open for you.
You have been hurt Judith. You have been jilted. I know. You have done things you are not proud of. I know. But my offer still stands today December 25th 2017.
Will you marry me?”
His eyes seemed to look at her pleadingly. He seemed like he was almost in tears.
He cradled her face again in his arms and all of sudden it felt like they were alone and no longer in the cafetaria.
He wasn’t dressed in jeans any longer but only in a white strip of cloth around his middle that looked like an underwear.
His face was bruised.
His head streamed blood down his face.
His hands had holes in them.
He had an expression of pain but also one that looked like a beggar on his face. He knelt down on one knee in front of her and suddenly she saw the open gash on his side with a ring shaped pool of blood around them.
Judith still couldn’t speak.
He said just one phrase over and over as He held up His blood stained palms to her.
“Marry me…
“Marry me…
“Please marry me Ruel….”
Study Questions And Insight:
“For you were bought at a price;…
I Corinthians 6:20a NKJV
The price Jesus paid for us literally cost Him everything. It cost Him His blood and the blood of a thing is its life.
Very few ladies would reject a diamond ring being offered to them in a proposal… but the proposal ring Jesus offers isn’t just a diamond ring.. it’s His blood. It’s His life. For you.
Everyday He asks: “Will you marry me?”
“I want to be your husband, I want to be your covering… will you marry me?”
Its hard to think of the Son of God as One who desires us like this but He truly does.
His heart is tender towards you. No matter how much you fall in the mud still He looks at you and says “Marry me. Take my ring. My blood shall wash you clean?”
Have you given Him an answer to His proposal?
If you haven’t could you please just say this one word from your heart today:
“Yes Jesus. Yes. My Yes is on the table. Come be my husband. Yes”.
***********************
If you have accepted Jesus as Lord and saviour before now, still His ring and proposal to us speaks of intimacy.
As a husband loves his wife so does the Lord love us.
He makes a covenant of marriage with us and desires us with all of His being.
This day as we celebrate His birth, really think: do I desire my husband as much as He desires me?
“She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
“In that day,” declares the Lord , “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. ’
I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked…
I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.”
Hosea 2:7, 14-20 NIV
Merry Christmas Blog hearts.
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