Today's Scripture Reading (July 24, 2023): Jeremiah 42
It
is always interesting when we try to get into the mind of God. Often, we seem
to believe that God thinks as we do. And I hear it all the time. Of course, God
would want me to do this because it makes sense to me. In the same way, I have
heard many people pray that prayer, "God, get me out of this mess, and I
promise that I will serve you," without ever considering that God might
want us in the mess. In our minds, life with God is easy and without stress, so
whenever stress or something that is hard to do enters our lives, we believe we
are being punished. God would never place us there.
One
of my favorite passages of Scripture is the Sermon on the Mount. And the Sermon
on the Mount begins with a group of verses that we know of as "The
Beatitudes." Consider some of these verses;
"You're
blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of
God and his rule.
"You're
blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you
be embraced by the One most dear to you.
"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes
persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom (Matthew
5:3-4, 10, The Message).
You
are blessed when you have nothing left to give and when you have lost
everything you value. You are blessed when you suffer persecution because of
your beliefs. None of this matches up with what we expect as followers of God.
I used to have a pastoral friend who offered, "You are blessed when the
activities of the church happen while the pastor is at home, reading in front
of a fire." It is hard to find anything like that in the teachings of
Jesus.
As
the people come to Jeremiah, they promise to do whatever God tells them to do
through the Weeping Prophet. Admittedly, biblical readers are unsure if this
promise is just words for the people on which they have no intention to follow
through or if they expect that God will command them to follow the path that
makes sense to them. But the command that is coming is going to challenge their
belief. God will instruct them to stay in Judah, and he will restore them. It
is an action that will make no sense to the people who want to escape to Egypt.
And God will propose a path that, in the shadow of losing everything they hold
dear, will take them to the point of being at the end of their rope and being
in a position where their belief will threaten to bring them persecution.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 43
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