This is what the Lord says:
“See how the waters are rising in the north;
    they will become an overflowing torrent.
They will overflow the land and everything in it,
    the towns and those who live in them.
The people will cry out;
    all who dwell in the land will wail…”
Jeremiah 47:2 (NIV)

It was early summer in 1993 and I made a quick trip to a car dealership just a mile or two up the street from my house with the whole family in tow. I don’t recall being there very long. The girls were just toddlers at that point, so it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes to look at whatever car it was that we were interested in seeing.

By the time we started pulling out of the dealership a creek the runs just a hundred yards or so to the south of the dealership had risen to flood the intersection between the dealership and our house. Over the next hour, I drove for mile and miles trying to find an open route that would get us safely home. I eventually had to drive about ten miles north and east of our location to successfully connect to the interstate that was still open and could get us back home.

Floods are an ominous thing. As I look back on my life journey, I realize that floods are the most consistent natural disasters that I’ve had to deal with throughout my life journey. What’s crazy is that you can’t always see them coming before the floodwaters start wreaking havoc. I’ll never forget waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of rushing water and discovered water pouring through a basement window. Talk about feeling helpless. Ugh!

Today’s chapter is another one of the prophet Jeremiah’s one-off prophetic messages to people groups in his region. This one is directed to the Philistines who lived to the south and west of Jerusalem. Like Jeremiah’s own people, the Philistines were caught in the no-mans-land between the two warring empires of Egypt and Babylon. Like Jeremiah’s people, the Philistines would have felt the tension of who they should side with in the conflict in order to avoid disaster.

In the message God gives to Jeremiah for the Philistines, it opens with the metaphorical imagery of a devastating flood coming from the north (that would be the Babylonian army) which the Philistines will be helpless to stop. In the ancient Near East, treaties often included curses for the people who broke the treaty. The curses were sometimes a “flood.” In surviving treaties from this same century, the Assyrian empire made vassal treaties with weaker city-states and promised destructive floods should those city-states break the treaty. This adds some context to Jeremiah’s message to the rising “flood waters” to the north.

The Philistines have been part of the geo-political landscape in this area for centuries. It was the Philistines who gave Samson troubles back in the time of the Judges. King David was always at war with the Philistines some 500 years before Jeremiah. What’s ominous about Jeremiah’s prophetic prediction of destruction for “all the Philistines” is that it turned out to be true. After Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon storms through the region in 605 B.C. the Philistines disappear from the historical record.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but think about floods in life. Along this life journey I have observed that sometimes troubles rise like floodwaters, and I am helpless to avoid them or prevent them. In those instances, the crucial question is how I will handle the reality of them. Jesus taught His followers to expect troubles. Those followers quickly learned that it was those troubles that required the production of character qualities such as faith, trust, perseverance, character, maturity, and hope. I have found the same to be true in my own life.

When troubles hit like a flash flood and the waters are rising, faith is the Life preserver that allows me to rise with them.

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