Monday morning rolls around, and I am exhausted (because I stayed up too late Sunday night). I reluctantly roll out of bed in the dark leaving sleep and warmth behind to spend my morning time alone with God. I am reading the book of Jeremiah. I put off reading the Old Testament prophets during the "Read the Bible in a Year" plan because of their doom and gloom prophecies. Funny, now all I have left are the prophets. You know the theme: Israel has messed up again. Now the consequence of their abandonment of God is coming to its full fruition, but God is promising restoration at the end of it all.
This time around I am smacked with a different view: Jeremiah is a relentless love ballad. God pursues his beloved children; even though, they turn their backs. God's heart is broken. "'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord, 'I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful,' declares the Lord" (Jer. 3:12).
The majority of people have turned to doing things their own way. God has become nothing more than a duty, an afterthought. He has moved to the periphery. "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jer. 2:13). The people have in essence told God, "Leave me alone! I will do it myself." However, the consequence of that attitude is disastrous: greed, envy, broken relationships, pain, war.
In spite of our waywardness, God seeks, calls, pursues. Divine love: radically pervasive, scarcely recognizable, wholly encompassing. Divine love shatters any conception of love we regularly experience. We withhold; we're stingy and conditional. Can we abandon our ideas and allow such extravagance to penetrate our lives? We must first get out the seam rippers and tear out the old stitching - that slow, tedious process. Then with God's presence, we reshape, repin while God restitches us anew. Rethink love. It is unlike anything we humanly experience.
"'Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? ... I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,' declares the Lord" (Jer. 31:20).
Comments