Jeremiah 8:18 - 9:1: Watching a Train Wreck

You who are my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me. Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King no longer there?”

“Why have they aroused my anger with their images, with their worthless foreign idols?”

“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. - Jeremiah 8:18 - 9:1

 "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved."

This is the tragedy of the redeemed. We rest in the solace of the fact that we are forgiven, and the urgency of repentance recedes from our consciousness. But this apathy is killing us and we idley pursue other things to fill up the emptiness inside. These things to take the place in our hearts that only God can fill are frustrating and even angering to God who cares for us. It is like the relationship between a drug user, his drug of choice and the parent who watches him gradually destroyed by his addiction. We are the addicts, chasing temporary solace while God sits by.

In these cases, what should God do to motivate us? Is he helpless in this case because of the magnitude of his mercy? No, he is not, but he knows that the solution requires bringing us to a place where we want him more than those other "gods" which we have tried to use to bring meaning, security and control in our lives. Sometimes we don't even realize that we have done this, this settling for the grace of lesser gods. Sometimes we think God is still there, to rescue us, even when things go wrong and even when we've been effectively ignoring his direction.

In these verses, God lets the other things that his people have been depending on, the land, the city, the temple all to fall away. Some of his people think that God would be upset, but not that upset. So they wait. But then God doesn't respond quickly. They fall into despair and that despair is heartbreaking to those watching this trainwreck of a nation: "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed"

Is God looking at me and watching a trainwreck of a person, slowly wasting away on a diet of insubstantial and meaningless God-substitutes? I hope not and when I slide that way, I pray he will not need to have to withdraw the same way he did to his people to get my attention.