"I have heard you," replied Jeremiah the prophet. "I will certainly pray to the LORD your God as you have requested; I will tell you everything the LORD says and will keep nothing back from you." – Jeremiah 42:4

Today's Scripture Reading (June 10, 2020): Jeremiah 42

Someone once commented that "I know everything happens for a reason. But sometimes I wish I knew what that reason was." I think we have all found ourselves in that position. We have to believe that the struggles that we go through in life have some sort of purpose, but amid the fight, it is hard to understand what that purpose might be. And so, we struggle, wishing that we knew what the endgame might be.

Jeremiah has struggled with a people who were not listening to him. Day after day, he has delivered the message to the people that God had given to him. And day after day, the people had rejected the message, refusing to even listen to what it was that the prophet was saying. And then, suddenly, there was a group of people who desired that the prophet would pray for them and tell them what to do. After months of rejecting his advice, now they were asking for it.

We shouldn't miss the possibility of sarcasm in Jeremiah's reply to the people's request for prayer. Sarcasm is sometimes hard to hear, and it is made even harder to understand in the medium of the printed word. Jeremiah's advice had routinely been rejected for a long time. And now, as they ask for his assistance, Jeremiah tells them that he will pray for them, but that he will also tell them everything that God tells him. The prophet's response holds two essential elements. The first is that Jeremiah will not deliver to them his opinion. He will wait for God's answer and give that to the people. It was a routine that Jeremiah had practiced throughout his ministry.

But the second element was that he would hold nothing back from what God was telling him. If the people wanted some kind of a rosy response, they just might be disappointed by the prophet's answer. Jeremiah had never tailored his reactions to the audience, and he wasn't about to start now. The people hadn't liked the message that God had given him before the fall of Jerusalem, and it was unlikely that they were going to appreciate it any better now. The people would know the full revelation of God about their current struggle. God would answer their prayer, but that didn't mean that they would like the answer. And there was a very real possibility that they would reject the message once more, wishing instead that there was another reason for the presence of their struggle.   

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 43