By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Tuesday
When things get tough
Jeremiah 12: 1-5
When you read the prophetic books of the Bible you get a magnificent picture of the history of the relationship between God and the nation of Israel. The ups and downs of the nation's history are seen as revealing the nature and purposes of God. God chastises, punishes and restores. You get glimpses of God's righteousness and God's steadfast love in the suffering of the nation and in the fact that it continues to exist.
The book of Jeremiah does this and more. It is very revealing of the prophet himself and his ups and downs as he struggles with his vocation. Here we get intimate glimpses of an individual's relationship with God. In Jeremiah's book we see, not just what is going on between God and God's people, but what goes on between God and God's person. Other prophets reveal some of this but none of them as eloquently as Jeremiah does.
- In verses 14-18 of chapter 20, following his complaint about the word of God burning inside him when he decided not to speak it, we find this lament:
- Cursed be the day on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!
Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father,
"A son is born to you," making him very glad.
Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without pity;
Let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon,
because he did not kill me in the womb;
so my mother would have been my grave,
and her womb for ever great.
Why did I come forth from the womb
to see trouble and sorrow,
and spend my days in shame?
These words reveal a powerful downer for one who also wrote in verses 4 and 5 of chapter 1:- N ow the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
What has all this pain and promise, conviction and self-doubt, commitment and self-rejection, to do with being God's person?
Add to these two passages the verses from today's reading in chapter 12. They record God's most amazing response to Jeremiah's complaint, "Why does the way of the wicked prosper?"- "If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?"
You think it is tough now? How will you do when it gets tougher? It seems that what is expected of God's persons is that they have it tough That's not when you are abandoned by God; that's when you are drawing near to God.
Confession
O God of steadfast love,- Again and again we need to have you call us yours,
Hide not your face from us.
If that means we must see ourselves as you see us, so be it.
- Shine away.
- Pierce the darkness of our self-deception.
Penetrate the veneer of our piety. - Illumine our neglectfulness.
- Reveal what is dissimulating about our loving.
Dear God,- What we see here is what we are.
What we are needs to be washed clean.
What we are needs making over.
We need to be born again, by water and the Spirit.
Dear God,- Your words says you will not refuse the Holy Spirit to those who ask.
Come Holy Spirit,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen