I am reading Jeremiah. I get in these times where I feel pulled towards one book or another in the Bible. I can't just jump around and fiddle around with those "read the bible in a year" or 365-day devotional plans. I need something to hold on to- something to finish. Working in a church, the work is never done. Nothing is ever really, truly finished. My relationship with God is never going to be finished. I am never going to be a finish product until the day Jesus comes back. But one thing I can do: read the Bible, and finish a book. Last time it was Galatians. As soon as I finished Galatians, I began feeling like I should read Jeremiah. Now... I can't just *read* books of the Bible. I want to know as much as I can about them. I read the commentaries, the background information, the historical information and interpretive challenges... Then I start to read, and read the commentary along-side. It's incredibly gratifying not the have to guess at the "meaning". I guess it just adds to the idea of completing something.
I start this piece with the lyrics to the song, "The Greatness Of Our God" because I am in chapter 5 of Jeremiah right now, and there is a passage in there that reminded me of it (this is The Message version):
20-25"Tell the house of Jacob this,
put out this bulletin in Judah:
Listen to this,
you scatterbrains, airheads,
With eyes that see but don't really look,
and ears that hear but don't really listen.
Why don't you honor me?
Why aren't you in awe before me?
Yes, me, who made the shorelines
to contain the ocean waters.
I drew a line in the sand
that cannot be crossed.
Waves roll in but cannot get through;
breakers crash but that's the end of them.
But this people—what a people!
Uncontrollable, untameable runaways.
It never occurs to them to say,
'How can we honor our God with our lives,
The God who gives rain in both spring and autumn
and maintains the rhythm of the seasons,
Who sets aside time each year for harvest
and keeps everything running smoothly for us?'
Of course you don't! Your bad behavior blinds you to all this.
Your sins keep my blessings at a distance.
Enter: the reason I love knowing the historical background. I KNOW who God is talking to. I know what makes Jeremiah prophesy. And yet, my own heart knows that I am guilty of such things. From the very beginning of this book of Jeremiah, I realized how difficult, and yet how easy it could be to trust God with everything. As with most of the prophets, how much would it take for someone to step out into crowded places and proclaim destruction upon them? Claiming to be a word from God, whom they have forgotten about and abandoned? These people do not even know or see God because they are blinded by their own sin! And as I contemplate Jeremiah's trust in God and God's protection, I also have to think about what it could have been like for Israel to turn from her sin and to God. What did it mean for those who could be faithful to trust that God could hold everything for them, could take away their sin, could love them and make them *feel* the same way that their own choices felt? How much faith and trust to we need to believe that God is greater than all of these things? To me, it seems that we need a revelation from God. We need the eyes to see who God is.
How often do we get caught up in living our own lives that we forget what God really desires for us, and do no listen to the voice of God in our lives, even when it is as obvious as someone proclaiming it as Jeremiah and other prophets did? I feel like for many people, as we walk this Christian life, or try to, we start to lean more and more on what we know, without realizing how much we do not know. We see the light and desire the light, but it is only a distant thought in the background of life-- this life that God has given us. We seek what God can do for us, and expect God to work in the context of the life we have created- we expect him to break through the idols we create without giving thought to the fact that we ought not to even have these idols! If you have ever been like I have been, you ask the very question: "How can I honor God with my life?" and walk away from the answer! I sincerely pray to know something, but do not listen intently for the answer, nor do I always process the ones I get.
So my prayer today is what the aforementioned song asks:
Take what I have known and break it all apart, for you God are greater still. I spend my life to know, but I'm far from close to all you are. Give me grace to see beyond this moment here. Show me how to live, and let your grace make me more faithful each day. Give me the grace to put all I know to, in your hands, and use me for your work and your will because I know your love for me is greater than even the love I have for myself.
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