Tag Archives: Jeremiah 21

Surrender

May 3, 2023 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

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

Death, Life, Surrender

April 13, 2018 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Along my life journey there have been a number of dreaded moments. Those days when the seeds of fear that have silently been cultivated in your heart and mind finally come to fruition. The unexpected phone call with tragic news of the death of a loved one. The final surrender to years of marital struggle. The company’s largest client who unexpectedly and completely walks away from a 25 year relationship, and with the departure nearly half of your income disappears. The ultrasound image of an empty womb.

In today’s chapter, the day of dread which Jeremiah has long prophesied finally comes to fruition. This is the predicted reality everyone around Jeremiah had mocked, ignored, laughed at, and denied. It finally happened. Nebuchadnezzar and the mighty Babylonian army have surrounded and laid siege to the city of Jerusalem.

Now the King of Judah and the priests of the Temple, representatives of the institutions who have long ignored Jeremiah, dismissed his warnings, threatened his life, and thrown him into the stocks, come begging the brooding prophet for help. It’s now obvious to them that Jeremiah’s hotline to God was real. Perhaps they can throw up a Hail Mary prayer through the prophet and escape the terror of a siege. After all, it worked for King Hezekiah decades earlier when the Assyrians came besieging.

Jeremiah’s response: “Not this time.” The city will be destroyed, all inside the city will suffer unspeakable horror, and likely be killed. There is only once chance a person had to keep his or her life: surrender.

This morning in the quiet of my hotel room as I ponder these things, I am struck by two thoughts;

First, God has woven the paradigm of death and life into the very fabric of creation. “If you want to really live,” Jesus said, “first you have to die.” When I really meditate on this simple teaching, I come to the conclusion that this notion is not some mystical, ethereal thought. At its core this is simple grounded reality of creation. “Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.” Place the spiritual aside for a moment and think only of the physical and material. Our dead bodies don’t disappear. They are converted to a different kind of energy that, in turn, feed more life in the system. Death feeds life.

God’s language is metaphor, and in the very fabric of creation Jesus tell us that He has layered the material, physical ecosystem with a spiritual reality: life comes through death. Then He surrendered Himself to give us the ultimate word picture of that truth. If you want to experience resurrection, you have to take up the cross.

I’ve learned along my journey the wisdom of the Teacher of Ecclesiastes (props to the Byrds for giving it a tune). “There is a time and a season for everything. A time to be born, and a time to die.” Sometimes things need to die in order for new life to come. A lost client makes way for new ways of looking at business. The end of a relationship leads to a different chapter in life. The death of a loved one makes room in time, energy and resources to be invested in new loved ones joining the family. Yes, Jerusalem would be destroyed, Jeremiah says, but a new Jerusalem would eventually be built. In fact, God says this process will be repeated: Revelation ends with yet another new Jerusalem, and new heaven, and a new earth. Old things pass away, new things come.

The second thought I’m pondering this morning is that the lifeline Jeremiah gave to the people of Jerusalem was to surrender. And so I’ve come to believe along my journey that sometimes the harder I fight and deny death and endings the harder my journey becomes. Learning the process of surrendering to God’s natural order of death-to-life, old-to-new, passing-and-coming flow has led me to deeper, fuller, more vibrant, and more peaceful life experiences on the journey.

Finally, I have to mention that U2’s Bad (which is good!) flowed through my spirit as I pondered these things this morning:

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free, I’d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so, fade away

Wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Jeremiah 21

January 28, 2011 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

“And then tell the people at large, ‘God’s Message to you is this: Listen carefully. I’m giving you a choice: life or death.” Jeremiah 21:8 (MSG)

I make life and death choices every day.

What I choose to think about. What I choose to do with my time. What I choose to say. How I choose to treat my spouse, my children, my family, my friends, my co-workers, and the stranger I meet. What I choose to do with my money. Where I choose go in my spare time.

A million little choices each day. They can be “life” choices that inch us towards life, health, goodness, and love. They can be “death” choices that inch us toward selfishness, spiritual suffocation, decay and isolation.

Today, I have a choice. I have choices. Lots of them. Each of them lead me one of two directions. I inch my way toward life, or I inch my way toward death.

Choose life.