Leaving The Promised Land

I am at an unpleasant crossroads. This girl is now my closest friend, and that alone is wonderful, but I am genuinely wondering whether it is okay for me to keep liking her as I do. For one thing, I have always had crushes, so it does help me to cope with being single. But I am also trying to give her and my desires for her up to God, to try to trust in Him to make a way if He wants to do so. She has guys after her right and left, and I cannot really help but feel somewhat jealous. When I try to flirt, she affirms her desire to be single right now, to avoid dating and relationships.

We tried to rush into things too fast at the start, so separation was healthy. For her, it would more or less have been a rebound thing. For me, well, it seemed to me that you do not write a love letter and decline when feelings are returned.

There's an ongoing theme in the book of Jeremiah through which I feel that God has been speaking in regard to this relationship. I have been far more hesitant now than in the past when it comes to making assumptions that God is speaking. After all, I do not wish to treat the Bible as a horoscope or something, just searching for something to match my feelings. Yet my conversation with her tonight, during which she demanded that I stop texting her so frequently, felt like a confirmation.

Jeremiah 24:5b-7 "I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. My eyes will watch over them for their good and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down. I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart."

He goes on to say that, in contrast, all who remain in this land, even though it is the promised land, He will make them "an object of ridicule and cursing" wherever He banishes them. He will send the sword, famine, and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land He gave to them and their fathers.

He is talking about the Promised Land. The promised land is a defining aspect of the Israelite faith, history, and culture. It is the homeland very specifically designated to Abraham at the time that God called him. And God is saying through Jeremiah that staying in that very same Promised Land will bring curses, and that going away from it into exile is actually going to make them better, stronger.

As dumb as it may sound, I feel like that girl and living near her is my Promised Land. Maybe that is just how I have to think of it for now in order to cope. In any case, I need to try to be present here, to live and put down a few roots, rather than to keep trying to reach her more. If it is God's will, He will make a way.