Coming Up For Air

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, 2 “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; 3 and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “Cursed is the man who does not obey the words of this covenant 4 which I commanded your fathers in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and do according to all that I command you; so shall you be My people, and I will be your God,’ 5 that I may establish the oath which I have sworn to your fathers, to give them ‘a land flowing with milk and honey,’ as it is this day.” ’ ”Jeremiah 11:1-5, New King James Version Spurgeon differentiates the nature of Christ's counsel from that of a lawyer who pinpoints clause after clause. "You must go through a great many consultations before he will come the point," Spurgeon says in "His Name: Counsellor," and all the while your poor heart is boiling over because ...

From Jeremiah 10… 23 O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps. 24 O Lord, correct me, but with justice; Not in Your anger, lest You bring me to nothing. 25 Pour out Your fury on the Gentiles, who do not know You, And on the families who do not call on Your name; For they have eaten up Jacob, Devoured him and consumed him, And made his dwelling place desolate. "I turned away with a smile on my face," narrates "You Love Me Anyway" by Sidewalk Prophets, realizing, "with this sin in my heart tried to bury Your grace." This sort of vanity pivot is perhaps evident at the end of Jeremiah 10. The prophet's confession in verses 23 and 24 is a thing of beauty and universal application. He recognizes human weakness for all of us, and confesses it directly to the Lord. He recognizes he has no standing before God in himself. Perhaps relieved of this burden, perhaps with some vague sense of the standing that...

17 Gather up your wares from the land, O inhabitant of the fortress! 18 For thus says the Lord: “Behold, I will throw out at this time The inhabitants of the land, And will distress them, That they may find it so.” 19 Woe is me for my hurt! My wound is severe. But I say, “Truly this is an infirmity, And I must bear it.” 20 My tent is plundered, And all my cords are broken; My children have gone from me, And they are no more. There is no one to pitch my tent anymore, Or set up my curtains. 21 For the shepherds have become dull-hearted, And have not sought the Lord; Therefore they shall not prosper, And all their flocks shall be scattered. 22 Behold, the noise of the report has come, And a great commotion out of the north country, To make the cities of Judah desolate, a den of jackals. "Even our tears of repentance," confesses Jerry Bridges in Pursuit of Holiness , "need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." Should we doubt our co-mingled motives signaled by our emo...

11 Thus you shall say to them: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.” 12 He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion. 13 When He utters His voice, There is a multitude of waters in the heavens: “And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, He brings the wind out of His treasuries.” 14 Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge; Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image; For his molded image is falsehood, And there is no breath in them. 15 They are futile, a work of errors; In the time of their punishment they shall perish. 16 The Portion of Jacob is not like them, For He is the Maker of all things, And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance; The Lord of hosts is His name. Hawk Nelson declares back to God in "Count on You," "You give me a front row seat to Y...

From Jeremiah 10… 6 Inasmuch as there is none like You, O Lord (You are great, and Your name is great in might), 7 Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? For this is Your rightful due. For among all the wise men of the nations, And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You. 8 But they are altogether dull-hearted and foolish; A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine. 9 Silver is beaten into plates; It is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of the craftsman And of the hands of the metalsmith; Blue and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of skillful men. 10 But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth will tremble, And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation. “We would do our theology better," pronounces John Piper in his John Calvin: And His Passion for the Majesty of God , "if more was at stake in what we said.” Jeremiah 10:6-10 helps to rattle us from our liturgical le...

Jeremiah 10:1-5 Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. 2 Thus says the Lord: “Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, For the Gentiles are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the peoples are [a]futile; For one cuts a tree from the forest, The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. 4 They decorate it with silver and gold; They fasten it with nails and hammers So that it will not topple. 5 They are upright, like a palm tree, And they cannot speak; They must be carried, Because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, For they cannot do evil, Nor can they do any good.” Matthew 6:3-4 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. Most of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate is by turns creepy and forgettable, but he lands accide...

23 Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; 24 But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 9:23-24 "You painted me a picture, and You showed me how to see," recalls Jars of Clay in "Unforgetful You".  "But I just won't behold it," they confess, "unless it pertains to me." Jeremiah 9:23-24 is a picture of such pride, and of the Lord undermining it along with His people's more hot, scandalous sins. For the third time in this chapter, He invokes the supremacy of knowing Him. Jeremiah 9:3 insists that knowing Him scatters the fog of a culture of inveterate lying. He is Truth. The wise among us aren't surprised. We nod sagely. He strikes the sweet chord again just three ...

17 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider and call for the mourning women, That they may come; And send for skillful wailing women, That they may come. 18 Let them make haste And take up a wailing for us, That our eyes may run with tears, And our eyelids gush with water. 19 For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are plundered! We are greatly ashamed, Because we have forsaken the land, Because we have been cast out of our dwellings.’ ” 20 Yet hear the word of the Lord, O women, And let your ear receive the word of His mouth; Teach your daughters wailing, And everyone her neighbor a lamentation. 21 For death has come through our windows, Has entered our palaces, To kill off the children—no longer to be outside! And the young men—no longer on the streets! Pat Conroy's narrator in Beach Music reflects that between his heritage and his former wife's that his daughter, "would get more than her portion of the genes of grief. Together, our families contained enough sa...

4 “Everyone take heed to his neighbor, And do not trust any brother; For every brother will utterly supplant, And every neighbor will walk with slanderers. 5 Everyone will deceive his neighbor, And will not speak the truth; They have taught their tongue to speak lies; They weary themselves to commit iniquity. 6 Your dwelling place is in the midst of deceit; Through deceit they refuse to know Me,” says the Lord. In 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You , author Tony Reineke admits one of the purposes of the constant accompaniment. "I want ANYTHING to break the silence that helps me feel the weight of my morality." Hawk Nelson In "What I'm Looking for" agrees. He sings, "I've always been afraid that if I stop, I'll know the demons that I face." Of course, this tendency to expend energy on distraction rather than repentance is older than the iPhone or the particular busyness of its age. Jeremiah 9's chronicles the same effect and its ironic weari...

1 Oh, that my head were waters, And my eyes a fountain of tears, That I might weep day and night For the slain of the daughter of my people! 2 Oh, that I had in the wilderness A lodging place for travelers; That I might leave my people, And go from them! For they are all adulterers, An assembly of treacherous men. 3 “And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, And they do not know Me,” says the Lord. U2 exposes the limits of our compassion in "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "We eat and drink while tomorrow they die." The opening of Jeremiah's ninth chapter abuts this very limit in dramatic relief. Having understood enough of God's offended Majesty to be His messenger for eight chapters now, Jeremiah stares into the abyss in the opening of the ninth chapter. He confesses that if he starts to grieve, he might never stop. Tears like a fountain wouldn't be enough. Wee...

 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. 17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. In Pinedale Christian Church's inaugural Ironworks Conference purposed to refine Christian communications Matthew Sink sought to prove a point with the help of secular advertisers. He said researchers took a group of novices in that endeavor, asked them to design ad campaigns, and had those campaigns judged by impartial experts. The results, predictably, were unconvincing. The researchers then had those same novices tutored in the basic techniques of the field, and the expert did not see much improvement in their efforts. The profound improvement came, Sink said, when researchers exposed these neophytes to the six basic storylines into which effective advertising tends to be classified. Those efforts which were rooted in a proven pattern, the expert said, actually showe...

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ Jeremiah 8:11, New King James Version As a new year begins, so does a new semester and an influx of new staff on the campus where I work. Although God's grace floods in with this novelty, my nervous system and habits of thought haven't quite acclimated to that grace. Even though I am in a part-time role and Christ has proven His provision just about as unconnected with my high-stress striving as He said it was for the sparrows and the lilies in Matthew 6:26-30, the pathways between a job task that needs to be done on the job and a raised pulse or tightened stomach on my part are time-tested from earlier days and had not yet been jettisoned. When the list of things to get done for the new staff was a little longer than usual yesterday, anxiety fired out of proportion. In reaction, I scolded that I could not avail myself of the campus's chapel services as a midday oasis. Whether or no...

From Jeremiah 8… 4 “Moreover you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Will they fall and not rise? Will one turn away and not return? 5 Why has this people slidden back, Jerusalem, in a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, They refuse to return. 6 I listened and heard, But they do not speak aright. No man repented of his wickedness, Saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his own course, As the horse rushes into the battle. 7 “Even the stork in the heavens Knows her appointed times; And the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow Observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord. Casting Crowns in "One Awkward Moment" narrates for all of us, admitting, "She's a castaway, stranded on the island of her yesterday. Like us, for their purloined protagonist, "Freedom was her ocean. She got swept away." Our experience of sin's hold is often a sense of being stranded on an island of our yesterday. Habit a...

From Mark 5… 6 When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. 7 And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.” "I wake to find my soul in fragments," Chris Rice self diagnoses to jarring effect in "Prone to Wander," "given to a thousand loves." Simultaneously in confession and clinging, he realizes, "But only One will have no rival, hangs to heal me, spills His blood." We see this demonstrated more dramatically, but no more helplessly, in the demon-possessed man in Mark 5. There is war within the same frame. The legs run to You. The lips recoil from You, sensing just judgment. Even as Yours, Lord, whom the demons dare not claim, we wake to find our souls in fragments, pulled by a thousand loves. We know what comes next in this man's Mark 5 story. If we ever knew such a moment of tense deliverance from the kinds of addictions w...

6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing. "He will never break His promise," Rich Mullins sings of God in "My Deliverance Is Coming," "though the stars should break faith with the sky." Paul has a similar sense of unshakable continuity in 2 Timothy 4:6-8. He and Rich both know our tendency by habit to use the physical as a frame of reference for the lasting. Paul has been accustomed to identifying with the body in which the Lord has placed him. People have seen that body and said, "Paul" whether they liked him or despised him. That body has been hearty enough to carry him through the hardships and persecutions he with in ...

From 1 John 3… 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. 19 And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. 20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Lauren Daigle confesses the completeness of her confession when she declares to God in "You Say," "You have every failure, God, You have every victory." I wonder which of those is harder to release. We hear much about surrendering our victories to the glory of God, and the toxic effects of not doing so. We can quickly become, to be sure, miniaturized versions of the nation of Israel and become so accustomed to a victorious, comfortable status quo that we begin to believe we are enjoying it because we deserve it. In turn, we can begin to judge those who are not experiencing victory and comfort to the degree that we are, when in fact their faith may be greater. But while we may be scouring our he...

As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Proverbs 27:17 "What is the object of writing to friends," considers CS Lewis in a letter to Arthur Greeves with logic that might be extended to social media, "except that of talking oneself into a state of self-importance and the belief that one's own perversities are a matter of universal sympathy?" Lewis's confession of the frequently self-centered purposes of our expression is what makes a recent experience of mine special. A friend sat with me in the same space. We talked about a purpose of writing bigger than generating sympathy for one's own perversities. We not only plug into a better motivation's in general, we went over some of my writing in particular, and I got to see the in-person impact of how certain phrases land. By his grace and patience, I got to, in the odd but apt phrasing of Proverbs 27:17, sharpen my countenance. By the expression on my friend's face as ...

A friend of mine named David died December 24 at 31. I'm not of an age where funerals have become common enough to leave me either jaded or inured of their power. In fact, I tend to look askance at most rituals as having long ago outlived their usefulness. His was an education I would have foregone, but not one I will not waste. (1) I will wait on and look beneath the iceberg. A mutual friend Rick, and a closer friend of his, used this metaphor for the departed. Our mutual friend said the departed seemed hard at first took a while to thaw. My friend was more patient, and so had the opportunity to get to know him better. This was on purpose, as Rick followed a Sunday school "assignment" and purposely set up a weekly lunch date with David and little by little found out what was important to him. As another friend of David's eulogized at the funeral, once you did that, he went from wondering if you could get him to talk to wondering if you could get him to stop. (2) I wi...

The Bethel Music family was in intense intercession for one of their own. A little boy named Jackson was fighting for his life. Despite the faith they sing about, one member was oppressed with the sense that Jackson was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. Then a song was laid on his heart which changed his outlook. One of the declarations in the resulting song, "Raise A Hallelujah" is, "I raise a hallelujah in the middle of the mystery." As we sang that at my church last Sunday, knowing many of our prayers have not been answered yet, I thought of the prophet's response to a more legitimate Questioner in Ezekiel 37:3. The Lord takes Ezekiel to a valley of dry bones. All flesh, all muscle, all human hope has departed. God asks his prophet, often referred to in Ezekiel for perspective as Son of Dust, "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel doesn't sing. He does, however, raise his own hallelujah in a few sanctified words. He gives the qu...

V. S. Naipaul of the New Yorker says of a particular reading experience, "I did so in a state of exaltation. It is perhaps," he suggests, "how all writers should be read, if we are to seize their essence and understand what the writing meant to them." His words are fitting, since reading is often trial run for how I want to approach life away from pages of polished paragraphs. Recent Scriptural stops actually encourage me in this initial optimism. Even someone as straightforward about human treachery as the prophet Jeremiah charges me in Jeremiah 6:16, "Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls." Other people have experience I don't. Their accumulated acumen is of value. The path people have marked off seeking humanity's mutual objectives deserves just consideration. In fact, as Naipaul suggests with reading, it merits that we start with a state of gratit...

From Jeremiah 6… 9 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “They shall thoroughly glean as a vine the remnant of Israel; As a grape-gatherer, put your hand back into the branches.” 10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, That they may hear? Indeed their ear is uncircumcised, And they cannot give heed. Behold, the word of the Lord is a reproach to them; They have no delight in it. From Matthew 1…  19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. 20 But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Humorist Joe Thurber wrote to a more baseball obsessed age, "95% of American men put themselves to sleep at night by striking out the batting order of the New York Yankees." Although the particular objective of our last reflective ...

Jeremiah 6: 6 For thus has the Lord of hosts said: “Cut down trees, And build a mound against Jerusalem. This is the city to be punished. She is full of oppression in her midst. "Civilization is based on principles which imply," unearths Oswald Chambers in The Highest Good – Thy Great Redemption , "that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6). I can declare permanence in my more optimistic moments. I can even give it a Scriptural sheen. I can look at times full of promise such as those when God's people entered the land that was to be theirs. So confident was He of their possession, and so ready to bequeath this confidence to them that He told them not to cut down the trees. Sure, they can be useful for siege engines, but the Lord would rather in that season have seen His people confident in Him in the day of battle, leaving the trees in place t...