228 - "God Is Setting Things Right For Us" Jeremiah 32-33

 "I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from Me." This promise! God will never stop doing good to me. It' just not my definition of "good." He changes my heart, my definition, to His. And that's good. We were never born to be in charge of our lives. Born to worship the One Who created us.  Jeremiah 32:40

God answers Jeremiah's prayer. What was in that prayer that was not from a good place in Jeremiah's heart? God says: Yes, "I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?" The city was a provocation from the day it was built---they followed idols not a Living God. Turned their backs on God. Again and again. God is going to give the city into the hands of the king of Babylon. Yet, God will bring them back to the land, too. "I will give them one heart that they may fear me always, for their own good and for the good of their children...I will rejoice over them to do them good and will faithfully plant them with all My heart and with all My soul. Jeremiah 32:41. He brings disaster; then, He brings good. A Promise. 

Beside myself reading this passage.  Jeremiah buys a piece of property from jail!  This piece of ground signifies hope.  There is a new day coming!  Houses.  Fields.  Vineyards.  Gardens.  They are coming back!  And Matthew Henry wisely writes:  "It is good to manage even our worldly affairs in faith; to do common business with reference to the Providence and Promise of God." I had a scary accident recently, hydroplaning my SUV across three lanes of busy interstate traffic at noon on a rainy day. I missed all the cars. Every time I tell the story, I feel that I need to reference my existence to God. 

Jeremiah sighs in praise to the God he worships and adores:  "Ah LORD, Thous has made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee."  Jeremiah 32:17.  And there it is right there.  A man in prison, unjustly.  And I complained incessantly this year because Worker's Comp never allowed me to visit a doctor for the minor trauma I suffered on my face.  Great in counsel; mighty in work; Thine Eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men.  Jer 32:19.  What more do I really need to lay life on His lap?

And God's beautiful response to this beautiful Jeremiah! "Call unto Me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things, which you know not!"  Even in jail!  Jer 33:3.

WHERE SHALL THE WORD BE FOUND, WHERE WILL THE WORD RESOUND?  NOT HERE, THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SILENCE - T. S. Eliot 

Still locked up in jail, Jeremiah is given a second Word from God in Jer 33:3.  In the silence of a prison cell, Jeremiah listens and God speaks: "Call to Me and I will answer you.  I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.  I want to give thorough renovations, working a true healing inside and out, so that your motto is 'God has set things right for us.' "  My prayer for you:  Be silent, o my soul, that I may hear God's Message to me this day.  Wonder what God is saying to you?  Can you still your heart to silence?

PHOTO:  I stood next to this solo tree hovering over the Pacific Ocean wondering about God's Power.  What mystery.  May we believe deep down where it counts that your outstretched arm is headed our way, on our behalf.