Tag Archives: Faith

Chapter-a-Day

Profound Simplicity

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Profound Simplicity (CaD Jer 35) – Wayfarer

“Jehonadab son of Rekab ordered his descendants not to drink wine and this command has been kept. To this day they do not drink wine, because they obey their forefather’s command. But I have spoken to you again and again, yet you have not obeyed me.”
Jeremiah 35:14 (NIV)

I mentioned last week that I was prepping for a message that I delivered this past Sunday among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers (you can find it on the Messages page). It was part of a series in which our local gathering has been unpacking seven metaphors that Jesus used to describe Himself (Bread, Light, Gate, Shepherd, Resurrection, Way, and Vine).

Last night Wendy and spent some time talking about the series and all of the messages we’ve heard from different teachers. One of the observations we made as we contemplated all that we’ve heard was that sometimes metaphors are so powerful in their simplicity that it can be a challenge to find anything else to say about it.

Ironically, I’m finding that to be the case with today’s chapter. It’s profound in its simplicity.

Back in Jeremiah’s day there were a tribe of nomads known as the Rekabites. They and their flocks wandered in the land, feeding their flocks, and living in tents just as Bedouin tribes still do to this day. The lived among the Hebrews and were on friendly terms with them. So, when the Babylonian army came into the area bent on conquest, the Rekabites chose to move inside the walls of Jerusalem for protection.

God tells Jeremiah to bring the tribal leader of the Rekabites, Jaazaniah, and his whole family to the Temple and offer him some wine. They refuse the offer, explaining that one of their tribe’s patriarchs said that his descendants must never drink wine, plant vineyards, raise crops, or build houses, but must always live in tents. In doing so, the tribe would always enjoy blessed lives as nomads. So, they have always obeyed their ancestor’s command and politely refused Jeremiah’s offer.

God through Jeremiah proceeds to state the meaning of this very simple metaphor. The Rekabites have for generations had trusted and obeyed the command of their forefather, but the Hebrews had refused to listen to, trust in, or obey the commands that God Himself had given through the law and the prophets simply to eschew idolatry and worship God alone. When the Babylonians leave, the Rekabites will take their flocks and tents and return to their simple, blessed nomadic lives wandering the land just as their forefather promised. The Hebrews, however, will suffer captivity, exile, and destruction.

As a disciple of Jesus, I have spent over forty years reading, studying, seeking, and plumbing the depths of what it means to follow Jesus. I have learned much and have forgotten much. I’ve read works of theology and philosophy so dense that getting through it is like cutting a brick with a butter knife. I’ve participated in conversations and studies that get so deep in the weeds that I lost my sense of direction and couldn’t find true north.

Along my journey, I’ve come to appreciate Jesus for His profound simplicity. He asks very simple questions like “What is it you are seeking in life?” and “Who do you say that I am?” His commands are equally simple. “Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.” His requirements are also pretty basic: “Believe in Me and do the things I tell you to do.”

It’s not unlike Jeremiah’s word picture in today’s chapter. Simply be like the trusting, faithful, obedient Rekabites, not like the stubborn, willful, rebellious Hebrews.

Whenever I find myself deep in the weeds, I stop and grab hold once again of Jesus’ profound simplicity. Believe in Me. Love God. Love others. Do what I tell you. Trust the Story.

That’s my true north. Once I find it, I find my way.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Up From the Ashes

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Up From the Ashes (CaD Jer 32) – Wayfarer

For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’
Jeremiah 32:15 (NIV)

For many years, Wendy and I have been part of a wine club. Every quarter we receive bottles of wine from small winemakers around the world, many of them small family vineyards. In recent years, one of our favorites has been a Sicilian wine called Tenuta Fenice, which means “House of the Phoenix.”

Back in 1968, a devastating earthquake destroyed the everything in the village where Dino Taschetta’s family grew their vineyards and made their wine. Everyone abandoned the region. In 2016, Dino returned to the ruins of his family estate and, from the ashes, resurrected his family’s vineyard of ancient, slow-growing vines. That year he produced the first vintage of Tenuta Fenice in a half-century.

I thought of this story as I read today’s chapter. Jeremiah is confined to the palace in Jerusalem, under house arrest. Jerusalem is surrounded by the Babylonian army who are laying siege to it. Jeremiah’s relative visits the prophet and offers to sell him a field.

Consider with me, for a moment, how ludicrous this proposition really is. Jerusalem is under siege. The Babylonian army surrounds it, everyone inside the city walls is trapped, nothing is getting in-or-out. There is little to no hope that anyone will survive, and once the city is ransacked and destroyed, the Babylonians will control everything. Everyone inside Jerusalem is starving, food is scarce, and inflation is through the roof. Every person needs their last shekel of silver to buy what scraps of food are left in the city. The most stupid thing you could do in this moment is spend your silver buying a field that you won’t ever see because you’re likely to be dead. Even if you do survive, the conquering Babylonians could claim it and its produce, leaving you with nothing.

Jeremiah buys the field, as God directs him.

It’s not a personal investment but a powerful word-picture.

Yes, the Babylonians will destroy the city.

Yes, those who survive will likely end up in captivity.

Yes, everyone’s emotional brains and survival instincts have kicked into overdrive and no one can think beyond how they might possible make it through their immediate, dire circumstances.

Nevertheless, Jeremiah buys a field, a vineyard. Jeremiah is looking beyond his momentary circumstances to embrace the larger story God is authoring in their tragic events. In doing so, Jerry foreshadows the same perspective Paul had despite suffering shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, lashings, and hardship I can’t possibly imagine:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV)

Though Jeremiah will not survive to see it, he purchases a field with the faith and hope of the promise God has proclaimed through him over, and over, and over again: After seventy years, God will bring his people back. The city will be rebuilt. The temple will be rebuilt. Wine will pour once again from this vineyard.

In fact, in about 500 years the wine of the new covenant will be poured out in this very city for the forgiveness of sins, and the hope of humanity. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the wine at Jesus’ last supper was from the vineyard Jeremiah purchased in today’s chapter?

In the quiet this morning, I contemplate the story of Jeremiah’s seemingly silly purchase. I contemplate the story of Dino Taschetta’s family vineyard, and their wine called “House of the Phoenix.” The mythical Phoenix was a popular symbol among Jesus’ early followers. The bird that rises up from the ashes to new life. Wouldn’t you know it, I’m preparing a message for my local gathering of Jesus’ followers this Sunday. The text? “I am the resurrection, and the life.”

I love God’s timing.

Up from the ashes. No matter the hopelessness of my momentary circumstances, God promises there is a larger Story He’s authoring.

I will trust the Story.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Seasons of Struggle

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Seasons of Struggle (CaD Jer 24) – Wayfarer

“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians.
Jeremiah 24:5 (NIV)

It’s still early in baseball season. Our Chicago Cubs have made a lot of moves in the past two years, selling off all of the star players from the 2016 World Series team. Younger players acquired in those trades along with those who are coming up in the system have been combined with short-term contracts of a few veterans to try and piece together a winning team. The result is that Wendy quite regularly blurts out, “Wait! Who is this guy? Where did he come from?”

C’est la vie.

In today’s rather short chapter, God gives Jeremiah a simple metaphor in two baskets of figs he came across at the front of the temple. It’s important to realize that the “exile” of Hebrews to Babylon was not a one-time occurrence that happened when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. There was an almost 20 year period in which Jerusalem was subject to the Babylonian Empire.

It began in 605 B.C. when the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, fresh from his crushing defeat of Egypt, stopped by Jerusalem (and a lot of other cities) to demand tribute in exchange for not destroying the city. Empires had learned along the way that having city-states paying regular tributes and taxes was a more lucrative deal in the long-run than simply destroying them. One of the strategies to avoiding rebellion of these cities was to take people of royalty, nobility, along with the talented and gifted into captivity back in Babylon where they could be both useful and controlled. So Neb took the Who’s Who of Jerusalem and sent them off to Babylon.

In 598-597, Neb returned to Jerusalem to put down an attempted rebellion led by King Jehoiakim. More captives were taken and Neb placed Zedekiah on the throne as his puppet. Ten years later, it was Zedekiah who rebelled and made an alliance with Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar returned to destroy Jerusalem in 586 to make an example of her to other city-states under his control. More exiles presumably were sent back to Babylon at that point.

Jeremiah’s prophetic career spanned all of these events. He watched as the best and brightest (the good figs) were taken away and the aged, poor, and weak (the bad figs) were left behind in Jerusalem. It’s kind of like our baseball team selling off and trading all its star players only to be left with scrubs and veterans past their prime to try and finish the season.

The word picture God gave Jeremiah in today’s chapter was a rare, hopeful message in the collection of Jeremiah’s prophetic works. God promises that all the “good figs” who had been taken into exile would survive, thrive, be protected, and would some day return. Most importantly, the captivity and exile in Babylon would teach those in captivity humility leading to repentance and much needed spiritual maturity.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that life is filled with difficult stretches for a reason. God, like a good father, allows His children to struggle because the pain and struggle is the essential ingredient to spiritual growth and outcome. He reminds Jeremiah of the hope of the exiles successful return which would occur seventy years later.

I am also reminded in the quiet this morning that before the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, they went through similar seasons in which players were sold off and traded in order to put together the young team who would end a 108 year World Series drought. Every baseball team, like every life journey, has seasons of struggle.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Surrender

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Surrender (CaD Jer 21) – Wayfarer

Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; they will escape with their lives.
Jeremiah 21:9 (NIV)

I have been listening to the audiobook Surrender, the autobiography of the rock band U2’s lead singer, Bono. If you’re interested, I’d recommend listening to the audiobook rather than reading it. Bono reads it himself complete with song snippets and sound effects. There’s something even more personal about listening to him tell me his stories.

Bono’s life journey has been pretty amazing, and not just because of being a rock star. He is also a follower of Jesus, and it’s obvious that his faith has compelled him to use his status to do big things and make the world a better place just like Paul used his Roman citizenship to appeal to Caesar so as to share his faith story in successive trials before increasingly more powerful political figures of his day. Bono’s journey has, likewise, brought him into conversations of the most powerful political figures on earth. He even got Pope John Paul II to try on his blue sunglasses.

As I listen, and I’m almost finished, my mind keeps going back to the title of his book, Surrender. It’s really the thread of the whole story. It would be easy to read his story as the simple charmed life of a rock star, but underneath the story line is his faith-fueled motivation rooted in a young teenager’s passionate surrender to Jesus. The passion appears to have never waned despite his critics, many of them self-proclaimed Christians wearing their bright and shiny Junior Holy Spirit badges.

I thought about this as I read this morning’s chapter and meditated on the prophet Jeremiah, who had an unwavering faith-fueled passion of his own. In yesterday’s chapter he said:

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 his word
    or speak anymore in 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.

In today’s chapter, King Zedekiah sends a messenger pleading for Jerry to seek God’s mercy and deliverance. What’s crazy about this is that King Z was personally responsible for the Babylonian army knocking at the gates of Jerusalem. It was King Z who broke his allegiance with Babylon and made an alliance with Babylon’s enemy: Egypt. King Z and his administration have done nothing but mock and try to violently silence Jerry’s prophetic messages. Now that the fecal matter is striking the electric, rotary oscillator with great velocity, King Z suddenly wants to make an alliance with Jerry. It seems Z will make an alliance with anyone who might benefit him in the moment.

I found Jeremiah’s response fascinating. At the very beginning of God’s relationship with the Hebrew people, He said, “I’m setting before you life and death. Choose life.” (Deut 30:19). In this moment of terror as the Babylonians threaten to destroy Jerusalem, God through Jerry tells them that the same choice is yet before them: life and death. If they want death, they can stay in the city and hold out against the Babylonian siege. If they want life, all they have to do is surrender.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that this faith journey is one of perpetual surrender.

Then [Jesus] told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? Luke 9:23 (MSG)

Or, as Bono sings it:

It’s in the street gettin’ under my feet
It’s in the air, it’s everywhere I look for you
It’s in the things that I do and say
And if I wanna live I gotta die to myself someday
Surrender, Surrender.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Essential Ingredient

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The Essential Ingredient (CaD Jer 19) – Wayfarer

“Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired.” 
Jeremiah 19:10-11 (NIV)

This past weekend, I took a couple of days to spend with my friend Matthew at the lake. We both have April birthdays, so it was a mutual birthday celebration.

One of the things I love about the lake is that the combination of quiet and separation from daily routines allow for a level of contemplation and conversation that normal daily schedules don’t afford. In those conversations this weekend, Matthew and I peeled back deeper layers of knowing and being known.

One of the things I love about my Enneagram Five friend, Matthew is his natural curiosity that leads to a depth of knowledge and understanding about how humans feel, think, and behave. This feeds his work as a therapist. Matthew unpacked for me some of the things being studied on the cutting edge of his field in the area of neurobiology, the study of the brain.

Matthew shared with me how the brain, like a computer, has both hardware and software. In our earliest years, our experiences and the feelings they stir in us lead to the hard-wiring which becomes our mental hardware. As we grow, the emotional center of our brain (how we feel) and the resulting hardware center of the brain (how we think) combine to determine how we see everything around us (what we believe). As he described this, it sounded awfully hopeless to me. If my brain becomes hard-wired in these patterns at an early age, is re-wiring it even possible?!

“Yes!” Matthew answered emphatically. “God made our bodies with the ability to heal, and that includes the brain. But there is one ingredient that is essential in facilitating the rewiring process: pain.”

In today’s chapter, the ancient prophet Jeremiah is told by God to take a clay jar from the local potter, gather some civic and priestly elders, and take them to the “Potsherd Gate” of Jerusalem which overlooked the Valley of Hinnom. The Potsherd Gate was so-called because the area right outside the city wall was a garbage dump for people’s broken and useless pottery. The Valley of Hinnom had long served as an area where citizens of Jerusalem met to worship pagan deities like Baal, which included the sacrifice of first-born children to the god Molech.

Having reached the gate and overlooking the Valley, Jeremiah smashed his clay jar and prophesied that God was going to lay waste to Jerusalem because of her unwillingness to turn away from the worship of their false gods and their detestable practices. This prophetic word picture had a layer of meaning for the elders he brought along with them. Rulers in that region, particularly Egypt, would write the names of their enemies on pottery and then smash them as a curse.

God was sending His people through a painful siege followed by a painful captivity in Babylon. God ultimately wanted to rewire His people’s thinking and beliefs, their minds and hearts, which had become hard-wired to hold fast to their duplicitous worship system while stubbornly rejecting God’s ways. As I read this in the quiet this morning, I heard Matthew’s words echoing in my own heart: “…there is one ingredient that is essential in facilitating the rewiring process: pain.”

Matthew and I spent some time talking through some of the most painful experiences in our respective life journeys. In doing so, we learned some intimate details about one another, things we’d never shared before. We were not only able to extend grace to one another, but we were able to appreciate and articulate how God used those deeply painful experiences to teach us important qualities like faith, endurance, patience, joy, and hope.

In the quiet this morning, as I get ready to head into another work week, I am reminded that God repeatedly reminds me throughout the Great Story that I am to rejoice, exult, and “consider it all joy” when life gets shattered like an earthenware jar. If I am willing to respond to those painful stretches of the journey with spiritual openness, God will use them rewire my heart and mind in ways that are otherwise impossible.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Scarred Hearts

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Scarred Hearts (CaD Jer 17) – Wayfarer

“Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool,
    inscribed with a flint point,
on the tablets of their hearts
    and on the horns of their altars.
Even their children remember
    their altars and Asherah poles
beside the spreading trees
    and on the high hills.”
Jeremiah 17:1-2 (NIV)

Wendy and I were sitting in the back row in our usual spot among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. Worship was beginning when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

He stood there looking like a lost puppy. Shoulders slumped, head downcast, and his face covered in a thick veneer of shame.

“I’m drunk,” he whispered in my ear, though my olfactory senses picked up on this long before his quaking voice told me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I responded, placing my arm around his shoulders and pulling him in tight.

I didn’t know this man’s story, but I immediately read his heart. That is a familiar script. It’s just like Hollywood, or the Hallmark Channel who tell the same story over and over again simply switching out names, settings, and actors. I didn’t need to know this man’s particulars. I sensed the story. It’s was a tragedy of life and relationships that had long ago engraved false words of defeat and shame on his heart. He had been self medicating for who knows how long. I didn’t know if he’d already hit rock bottom or if something had scared him enough to know that he was falling fast. His movie eventually ends one of two ways: a dark tragedy, or a tale of redemption.

The people whom the ancient prophet Jeremiah is addressing are not unlike a corporate version of the same storyline. In today’s chapter, Jeremiah reads the false words of defiance and rebellion on their hearts. They had been repeatedly cut-into their hearts for generations like a lost teenager cutting the words of their shame into their flesh with a razor blade. Over time the words become scar tissue that keep building up with increasing hardness.

Jeremiah had watched as King Josiah tried to impose change through institutional legal demand, but Jeremiah observed what I mentioned a week or two ago: Dictates Don’t Change Hearts. In today’s chapter, Jerry notices that it was not just the adults with sin and rebellion carved on their hearts no matter what the King said was legal or illegal. These types of internal messaging get passed down through the generations. Josiah may have destroyed the idols and burned them into ashes, but it didn’t make a lick of difference, even in the hearts of children whose parents had impressed their thoughts and behavior onto their children from the womb.

Behavior modification will never change a scarred heart.

My arm wrapped around my intoxicated friend, I asked him to look around the room as my free hand gestured across the small crowd gathered there. There are a bunch of people in that room who have found themselves a character in basically the same movie, myself included. The script is just a little different from person-to-person. In that room are addicts, ex-cons, liars, cheats, and adulterers whose hearts were hardened and scarred, but then they experienced a personal encounter with Jesus who spiritually performed a cardiac transplant described by Jeremiah’s colleague, Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)

As my hand swept over the crowd and described these transplant patients to my new friend, I was aware that there are others who are still trying to do the behavior modification thing. There always will be. The human condition hasn’t changed since the days of Jeremiah. There will always be those who dress up their lives in a religious facade in hopes that no one will notice their scarred heart and the things it leads them to do in the dark when no one is looking. They are in a little bit different movie, but it’s also a well-worn storyline that’s been told a million different ways. The similarity is in the same two endings to which the story leads, tragedy or redemption, dependent on the same choice between heart transplant or not.

“Just keep coming,” I told my friend before praying over him.

He did.

The last time I ran into him he had a smile on his face. He was standing erect. There was life in his eyes and light in his countenance. As we walked together, he shared with me that there had been a change in his life, but I knew it before he said it just as I knew he was drunk that one day before he said it.

The tell-tale signs of a spiritual heart transplant were evident.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

What I Want to Hear

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What I Want to Hear (CaD Jer 14) – Wayfarer

Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds. Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: I did not send them, yet they are saying, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ Those same prophets will perish by sword and famine.
Jeremiah 14:14-15 (NIV)

In today’s chapter, Jeremiah describes a drought that struck sometime in his prophetic ministry. No one knows when this was, but drought is a periodic reality in that area of the world, just as it is here in Iowa.

What intrigued me about Jerry’s conversation with God was his description of all the other prophets who, claiming to speak in God’s name, continued to tell everyone that every little thing was going to be alright, that the drought would not lead to famine nor would the Babylonians attack as Jeremiah has repeatedly warned.

It made me meditate on three things this morning:

First, there have always been false prophets like Jeremiah describes. In today’s terms, I’m reminded the name-it-and-claim it preachers of prosperity gospel. Health, wealth, and bullet-proof optimism flow from their lips, telling their donors (they are always asking for money) and followers that God wants to bless them with health and wealth, too. I was in college during the televangelist scandals back in the late 80s. They are still around.

The second thing on which I meditated is the current state of our culture and media. This is my observation, not a political statement. The fact is that news organizations on both sides of the political spectrum have abandoned objective reporting to feed their viewers whatever those viewers political bent happens to be. One of the fascinating things I’ve witnessed coming out of the Covid years are small, independent news and journalism outlets on platforms like Substack. One that Wendy and I have begun reading regularly states openly that they began their site in order to return to journalism that’s about objective reporting of facts. The founders of the site came from one of the most prestigious news outlets in the world and complained of editors demanding that reporters write within the preferred political narrative the editors were pushing. It’s happening everywhere, and it’s happening on both sides of our cultural divide.

Which leads me to the third thing on which I meditated this morning. False prophets of religion, news, and politics are not going away just as Israel and Iowa will continue to experience periodic droughts as has always been the case. As I chewed on these things in the quiet this morning, I was reminded of Paul’s mentoring words to his young protégé Timothy:

You’re going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.
1 Timothy 4:3-5 (MSG)

Along my life journey, I’ve observed that life is filled with tragedy and difficulties. It’s also filled will facts and realities that inconveniently refuse to fit into what I want to believe about the world as I desire it to be in the comfortable little box of my personal worldview. Jerry had the difficult job of being the lone voice pointing out the proverbial handwriting on the wall; A message no one wanted to hear. They preferred to have their fancies tickled with false assurances. It was still that way when Paul was mentoring Timothy. It’s still that way today.

I concluded in the quiet this morning that I am on a faith journey as I follow in the steps of Jesus. It is Maundy Thursday as I write these words (the commemoration of Jesus’ final night before His execution) and I’m reminded that the end of Jesus’ earthly journey was not a pleasant one. It’s funny how easy it is for me to believe that it should be different for me than for the One in whose steps I follow. If the world operated perfectly within the comfortable little box of my personal worldview then Jesus would never have had to cry out, “Father, let this cup pass from me” and I would never need faith.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

“Good Luck Charm” Religion

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"Good Luck Charm" Religion (CaD Jer 8) – Wayfarer

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
    for we have the law of the Lord,’
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
    has handled it falsely?”
Jeremiah 8:8 (NIV)

A few years ago, I was working with a group of leaders who were tasked with teaching the book of 1 Corinthians to a larger gathering of Jesus’ followers. Before we began, I made a copy of the text without any of the chapter or verse numbers listed. I changed the type face to a font that resembled actual handwriting and printed it and handed it out. I encouraged the team to put themselves in the sandals of a leader of the Jesus followers in ancient Corinth and to read the words as they were originally intended: as a personal letter from their friend Paul. It was a transformative exercise for us.

One of the things that I have to always remember on this chapter-a-day journey is that the chapter and verse designations were not part of the original writings for centuries. Manuscripts as early as the 4th century AD contain some evidence of text being divided into chapters, but it wasn’t until the 12th century that Steven Langton added the chapter divisions and it wasn’t until 1551 that a man named Robert Estienne added the verse definitions. In 1560, the first translation of the entire Great Story referred to as the Geneva Bible, employed chapters and verses throughout. They’ve been used ever since.

Chapters and verses are an essential method for study, referencing, and cross-referencing. That’s why they remain. However, in my forty-plus years of studying, I’ve found that they can also hinder my reading, understanding, and interpretation. Chapters and verses gain individual attention apart from the context of the whole in which they were intended when written. Individual verses get pulled out of context. In other cases, like today’s chapter, the entire chapter is merely a piece of a larger message. I can easily read and contemplate just today’s chapter alone without connecting it to the chapters before and after into which they fit.

In today’s chapter, I noticed that the Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day were saying, “We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord.” Something clicked and I remembered something I read in yesterday’s chapter: “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” Both chapters are really part of one message or series of messages to be read together as a unit.

Taken together, I realize that there’s a theme in Jerry’s message that I would never see if I confine myself to each individual chapter and don’t consider them together as a whole. The Hebrew people of Jeremiah’s day had misplaced their trust. They trusted in Solomon’s Temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They trusted in the “Law of the Lord” which had recently been rediscovered and made known to them. They had not, however, placed their trust in the God who gave them the Law, nor the God who inspired the building of the temple. They were treating the temple and the Law the same way they treated the other gods who they had worshipped, sometimes within the temple they were worshipping. The temple and the Law were basically good luck charms like all the other stars, idols, and pagan images they worshipped along with them.

In the quiet this morning, I thought about people whom I’ve met and known along my life journey whom I’ve observed treating their religion and their local church building, much like the people Jerry is addressing in his message, as good luck charms. When trouble comes in life (and trouble always comes in life – God even says so) I have observed their shock and anger. I have heard them express rage at God for not warding off their troubles and making their lives free of difficulty, pain, or sorrow. But God never promised that.

In fact, when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of their own free will, God said specifically that the consequences would include pain and conflict, sweat and toil, along with death and grief on our earthly journeys. Going to church and dressing my life up in religious traditions does not save me from any of those earthly realities. However, a trusting relationship with God gives me what I need to endure troubles in such a way that qualities like faith and perseverance, peace and maturity, along with joy and hope hone me to become more like Jesus, who endured more undeserved trouble than I could ever imagine and did so on my behalf.

Once again, a Bob Dylan lyric came to mind as I pondered these things this morning:

Trouble in the city, trouble in the farm
You got your rabbit’s foot, you got your good-luck charm
But they can’t help you none when there’s trouble…

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Chapter-a-Day

Faith-less or Un-faithful?

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The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah.”
Jeremiah 3:11 (NIV)

There is a stretch of my life journey that I look back on and call “the dark years.” I was angry for a number of reasons, and underneath the anger was an internal struggle with God, with myself, and with my circumstances. In this struggle, I acted out in unhealthy ways.

A therapist friend of mine says that “everyone is having a conversation with Life,” and I have found this to be true in my own experience. During my dark years, I wasn’t ignoring God or pretending He didn’t exist. I was in constant conversation with God. Like a rebellious teenager, I screamed at God. I threw tantrums. I argued with God, I swore at God, and I defiantly did things I was forbidden to do out of spite. And, when my attitude and actions led to really painful places, I found myself walking in the shoes of the Prodigal. I was humbled. I was broken. I was ashamed of the pain I had caused my loved ones, and I returned to the arms of my Heavenly Father and learned what “amazing grace” really means.

The dark years came to mind as I read today’s chapter. It begins with God addressing the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah couldn’t make up their mind regarding their relationship with God. Of their 20 monarchs, nine of them were somewhat faithful to God, while 11 of them followed after the local pagan gods. I can’t help but think of the words of the prophet Elijah from a couple hundred years before Jeremiah: “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

I have to remember that Jeremiah is addressing the people of Judah amidst the religious reforms enforced by King Josiah. The people of Judah are pining for their idols despite the fact that the king has destroyed and outlawed them. They feel no shame about this. Theirs is a life of duplicity and wavering. They want it both ways. They contend to have an open marriage with God. “I should be able to make love to my pagan idols, and God should love and bless me anyway.”

God then tells Jeremiah to consider the northern kingdom of Israel. At the time of Jeremiah’s prophetic sermon, Israel had been destroyed by the Assyrians and led into captivity a hundred years before. Unlike Judah, Israel didn’t waver. They wholeheartedly went after idolatry. Not one of their 19 kings was faithful to God. Like me in my dark years, they flipped off their Heavenly Father in oppositional defiance. And, then they hit rock bottom thanks to the Assyrian Empire.

Now God speaks to Jeremiah as a frustrated yet loving Father. He sees Israel’s outright rebellion as more honest than the duplicitous wavering of her sister, Judah. God uses two different Hebrew adjectives. Israel was “faith-less” (there was no attempt to even pretend they cared) while Judah was “un-faithful” (they toyed and pretended they would be faithful, only to betray God over and over again). Father God then has Jeremiah face the leftover remnants of His people in the north and pleads for the Prodigal to return.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself mulling over my dark years. Ugh! I honestly see the shadow of both Judah and Israel in my own oppositional defiance, neither of them good. But today’s chapter has me contemplating the fact that there is something that God respects in those sinners who don’t even pretend to care about Him in contrast to those who say they love Him and then live as if they love the world and the things of the world. I see this in the way Jesus hung out with the outright “sinners” like Israel while directing His sharpest criticism and condemnation on the “religious” leaders who, like Judah, pretended they were faithful, but whom Jesus described as “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

I head into the day with this episode from Matthew 9:11-13 resonating in my spirit:

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and misfits?”

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

Featured Image: Prodigal Son by Thomas Hart Benton

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Chapter-a-Day

Certain Calling in Uncertain Times

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Certain Calling in Uncertain Times (CaD Jer 1) – Wayfarer

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Jeremiah 1:9-10 (NIV)

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The past seven years have been the craziest stretch in my lifetime. I’ve heard some of my elders compare it to the 1960s and early 1970s. I was but a wee-one back then. I was six when Nixon resigned. I remember watching it on television.

The political turmoil, the division, the global upheaval of the pandemic, and the heightened conflicts in virtually every layer of society have been fascinating to observe. What’s made it even more fascinating for me is to recognize that the upheaval flies in the face of a well-documented reality: The earth as a whole has never been such a great place to live in all of human history. Life spans have never been longer. Humans have never been so rich, so educated, so healthy, or so safe. If you don’t believe me, please pick up a copy of Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness or stop by his website gapminder.

What has been so fascinating for me to witness is seeing so many claiming that the world has never been a worse place to live and that things have never been worse economically, racially, and in the quality of life. When I observe this disconnect, I personally conclude that there is something happening on a spiritual level.

For those who have been trekking along with me on this chapter-a-day journey, our trail this past year has been through the story of the history of the Hebrew tribes from the time of the Judges through the monarchies of Saul, David, and Solomon, to the years of the divided kingdoms of Israel (north) and Judah (south). We ended 2 Kings in which the kingdom of Judah is taken into exile by the Babylonians, and we then followed the prophet Daniel to Babylon.

Life at the end of the Hebrew monarchy and the time of the Babylonian exile was a period of tremendous upheaval on almost every level of society for the people of Judah. There was political instability, and conflict everywhere along with violence, war, and famine. It feels to me as if it was, for the common person living through it, not unlike what we have been experiencing in our own period of history.

There was a man who lived through this period of upheaval. His name was Jeremiah. God called Jerry to be His prophet and the prophet wrote the longest book in all of the Great Story (by Hebrew word count). He not only records the words God gave him, but he was also not afraid to record his personal emotions about his life and circumstances. He was not afraid to cry out to God against his personal enemies. Jerry is a very human being who is living in strange times. And so, I think it is a good time to make another journey through his story, and through his writings.

In today’s chapter, God calls Jerry to be His mouthpiece. He’s young. He’s too young, the young man tells God. He’s probably parroting what he’s been repeatedly told by his parents, his teachers, his culture, and every adult he’s ever known. But, as Paul instructs young Timothy, God tells young Jerry not to let anyone look down on him because he’s young. God doesn’t put a minimum age on being His instrument. That’s a lesson that earthly religious institutions have never really embraced. Human institutions prefer the bureaucratic control of hoop-jumping and meritocracy to the messiness of mystery, faith, and surrender.

What God makes clear to Jerry from the beginning is that, as the Author of Life, He has had a plan for Jerry before he was formed in the womb. He likewise is authoring the Great Story on a geopolitical scale and the storyboard is already sketched out. Jerry’s job is to fulfill his role and to communicate the script that’s already written.

This gives me encouragement as a disciple of Jesus walking through my own strange times. I believe that I was known before I was formed in my mother’s womb. I believe that what is happening in the modern geopolitical landscape and our own period of history is every bit as storyboarded as the events of Jeremiah’s day. If I really believe what I say I believe, then I have nothing to fear nor do I need to be anxious – just as Jesus instructed The Twelve on the eve of His execution. I simply need to fulfill the role I’ve been given and trust the story that’s already written.

The featured image on today’s post was created with Wonder AI

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.