September 30, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Pay them back what they deserve, Lord, for what their hands have done. Put a veil over their hearts, and may your curse be on them! Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord.“

(Lamentations 3.64-66)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

What is that old saying “What goes up must come down”? There is another one that I would call to mind as I read the verses above and review the entire lament with is chapter 3 (one of five laments, chapters 1-5). That adage is a reminder “No one is perfect/good but God alone.” It is the very words of Jesus to the Rich Young Ruler who came asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I have reflected on that story before. It is not my purpose to do so again here. I would say this as its message cannot be lost against the context of Jeremiah’s lament. The Rich Young Ruler understood this truth: eternal life cannot be bought not earned, it can only be given. His very question begs the very answer that is obvious: an inheritance can only be given and received based on a true relationship. What Jesus led the young man to (as well as the disciples and the listening audience) was the discernment of “what is the real relationship.” For the Rich Young Ruler, the relationship was revealed as “finances and wealth.” The story says that he walked away defeated because he had a lot of money. He could not lay it aside in order to take up the cross and follow Jesus to the greatest riches in all the world and in all of creation throughout heaven and earth. That greatest treasure is eternal life with God the Father. God alone is perfect in all His ways and thoughts. That is the reminder that we, as humans, are not. However, we are invited to be in a real relationship with God that is uplifting and not enslaving. It is a relationship that is freeing and not deceiving. It is a relationship of encouragement and not dark discouragement. Jeremiah had that relationship with God. The pinnacle of the acknowledgement came beginning in verse 22, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.” In true lament form, there was a commitment to action, if you remember, as Jeremiah proclaimed “I will wait patiently for Him.”

Except Jeremiah really doesn’t. The rest of chapter 3 is spent in bemoaning his dire situation. It is almost as if he believes his own situation, which was bad, was the epitome of the whole of Jerusalem’s story in that season. How soon Jeremiah set aside the confidence which of being committed to “God’s will be done” and pick up “God give it to all those who have hurt me.” He is still human and broken, after all. His commitment to “wait on the Lord” is challenged by all those around him who deal with him beyond contempt. That circle of contempt is both foreign and domestic. It is so great a force that it causes him to forget God and all His benefits. Jeremiah slips into that “Sons of Boageneres” attitude asking Jesus for permission to call down hellfire and brimstone on the discourteous and thoughtless people who met them in a certain Samaritan town. To James and John, those people merely lived up to the reputation which Jews had put upon them. to James and John, God was a tool to support their own feeling of entitlement as Jews. Their own thoughts and prejudices betrayed them. Since they anticipated being treated disrespectfully when they believed that the opposite should be true, they acted disrespectfully themselves. Some might say of such thinking “Their reputation preceded them.” What was worse about James and John is that actually spiritualized their arrogance. They projected their own disappointment as one that Jesus should have felt, too. After all, they were in that town only because they were with Jesus. Everybody should love Jesus and honor Him (and thus honor the disciples as well because they were in “real relationship.”) Jesus had to remind them of their place, their mission and thus their identity. James and John, and perhaps the other disciples as well, were as out of sync with the mission and purpose of God as was the Rich Young Ruler…

As was Jeremiah! We see the rawness of Jeremiah and know it ourselves. We all have been bullied, rejected, pushed down, put down, cast out and been made to feel unworthy. What is worse, some of us have actually experienced it from within our own circles of influence: church, work, friends and family to name a few. It either reduces us to tears or causes us to rise up in violence and anger. It is a fine line we walk between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of humanity. I can only explain it this way at the moment. Today is seemingly a twenty-four hour time period. Yet, the time in which we live is also called “today.” Yesterday precedes today and tomorrow succeeds today. Today is just a fine line of time between the past and the future. We live on the cusp between the two. Today is more like a fragment of a second which is here and gone with every tick of the clock. So, too, are our lives moving through that moment of time. We dare not forget ourselves in the midst of it. Our past is a volume of experiences that is full and increases daily. Our past remains an unknown except that for Christ followers we will receive eternal residence in Heaven and just the opposite for those who do not follow Christ. That gives real meaning to me about Jesus’ teaching “Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow has enough trouble on its own.” Wonder if Jesus was speaking of that “opposite residence”? Wouldn’t that really be real trouble? It is the place where those who are not in a true relationship with God in Christ experience the “rest of their lives in death.” Jeremiah was forgetting himself. He left the pinnacle of trusting and believing in God no matter what and fell right back down into the pit out of which he had cried for help. He was fashioning his “tomorrow response” with a “yesterday consideration.” You cannot live in Heaven and Hell at the same time. You can only live in the today of the Kingdom of God. We need that reminder from the starkness of Jeremiah’s lament. As we read those closing verses, we ought to be screaming out to him “You can’t live that way after saying you trust God explicitly.” Hmmm… does that scream echo in your own ears? Is it challenging your own heart, mind, body and soul with the stark reality of what is and what should be? Isn’t it time that we start moving back up out of the pit instead of wallowing in it. Isn’t it time we see the prodigal in us all, a pit of our own despair and making, and turn back to God and our commitment of faith to “see Him only and wait in service for His Will to be done”? He is waiting for us to come home. He is waiting for us to step off that fine line of an impossible walk and step into the fullness of His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.