Day 55: Jeremiah 11-23

Jeremiah has a rough deal.  I like Jeremiah, always have because I feel his pain.  I understand his humiliation and struggle and - dare I say it - even doubt.  God pushes and pushes and pushes Jeremiah.  "Jeremiah, buy a linen belt...."  "Jeremiah, go down to the potter's house..."  "Jeremiah, ..."

"O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; 

you overpowered me and prevailed.  

I am ridiculed all day long; 

everyone mocks me.  

Whenever I speak, I cry out

proclaiming violence and destruction.

So the word of the LORD has brought me 

insult and reproach all day long.

But if I say, 'I will not mention him

or speak his name,'

his word is in my heart like a fire,

a fire shut up in my bones.

I am weary of holding it in; 

indeed, I cannot."

Jeremiah 20:7-9

I like Jeremiah, because he tells it how it is.  I have been reluctant, even resentful as Jeremiah is at times.  You may find me too harsh, but READ Jeremiah.  He is clear.  This, this calling God has given him, it is by no means easy.  It is indeed a struggle.  He curses the day he was born, wishing that he had never been born!  If that's not struggling, I don't know what is.  Jeremiah is honest, and what is more, this is all in God's word.  Life is not all puppy dogs and roses.  God knows that.  He gives us hope.  God is just and merciful.  God knows this is and would be a struggle for Jeremiah, but it was still a calling that had to be carried out.  Jeremiah puts things in perspective.  If this was that hard for Jeremiah, how do you think God felt?  Sure he was angry and right to be so, but don't you think that God, who is loving and just, would also be aching for his people.  He has been the whole time.

Jeremiah's heart was breaking and he was tired and anxious and done.  So was God.

You may feel that is too much personification for the Almighty, but I think that makes Him all the more approachable.  What He asked Jeremiah to do - it was no easy thing.  What He was doing Himself - it was no easy thing.  He had to do this thing because of His character, but there is hope.

"So then, the days are coming," declares the LORD, "when people will no longer say, 'As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,' but they will say, 'As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.' Then they will live in their own land."

Jeremiah 23:7-8

So then, in the meantime, to quote one of my favorite singer/songwriters of all time, Sara Groves, "Jeremiah, tell me about the fire.  I wanna know, I wanna know more now..."  I want to know what it is like to have God's spirit and presence so press you, that you must speak it out.  I have known that before.  I want to know it again - with all the blessings and all the pain.