May 17, 2020, Jeremiah 21:8-14 – Post 2 – ISSL Reflections

You can find Jeremiah 21:8-14 here –
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+21%3A8-14&version=NRSV

IV.
When we left off the other day, I asked you to consider two questions –
1. How do we handle disappointment with God?
2. How do we know what in a Scripture passage is time/place specific and what should be universalized as we understand our lives lived as God’s people?

It would be great for us to talk with one another about how these questions strike us, how comfortable or uncomfortable with them we are, and how we respond to them. As we ask such questions in the presence of one another, and respond to them honestly, we all have opportunities to become maturing disciples of Jesus and discover ways to live more fully in the Kingdom he ushered in. Often, is not in answering questions but in living with the questions that we come nearer becoming the people God calls us to be. Do you think that might be part of what it means to “trust God”?

V.
Was the King disappointed with the Prophet’s response to his inquiry?

It seems clear he had an answer in the mind he was hoping for and do you think expected? Past history for him provided examples of God coming to the rescue of the nation, so why not once again?

But not this time.

Why? Had things gone too far? Had they moved too far away from living as God’s people? But still, they had failed in the past and God came to their rescue.

VI.
For me, there is no easy answer. At least not one that ties up such things in a nice little package that we can take out every time life doesn’t go our way, open the package and say, “See, this explains it all.”

That being said, maybe there is something of a way to move forward. After the Prophet said the rescue the King wanted (maybe expected) was not coming, then he told the King,

To the house of the king of Judah say: Hear the word of the Lord, O house of David! Thus says the Lord: Execute justice in the morning, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed, or else my wrath will go forth like fire, and burn, with no one to quench it, because of your evil doings. – (Jeremiah 21:11-12)

Is Jeremiah saying, “You know how the Lord wants you to live, you know what the Lord calls you to do – Go Do It!”

Do we keep trusting The Lord even in our disappointments? Do we keep moving toward the Kingdom The Lord establishes?

Some days, it’s hard. Very hard.

What would you do?

Charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}


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