Jeremiah 12:14-15 – Plucky in Being Plucked


Thus says the Lord: “Against all My evil neighbors who touch the inheritance which I have caused My people Israel to inherit—behold, I will pluck them out of their land and pluck out the house of Judah from among them. Then it shall be, after I have plucked them out, that I will return and have compassion on them and bring them back, everyone to his heritage and everyone to his land. Jeremiah 12:14-15, New King James Version

Rich Mullins sings in "Step By Step," "Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw was lit for me. For he was a stranger in this land, and I am that no less than he."

His is the tenacious, fibrous continuity of Jeremiah 12:14-15. Both know dislocation, Jeremiah's congregation for disobedience and Abraham by obedience. They both know what it is to be plucked, uprooted, to no longer steady a sense of one's equilibrium by a vocation plied in a particular place.

Both rest, though, and the kind of divine forethought that Rich Mullins highlights. Yes, in the stream of time being a stranger feels strange. Yes, Jeremiah's hearers are experiencing acute loss of control as they are plucked out of their land. Yet, they can hold onto a sense that there is a plan more abiding than the feelings of the moment. Those stars to which God directed Abraham's attention in Genesis, they were shining at representing His faithfulness long before Abraham started to doubt it. Jeremiah announces the compassionate return at the same time as the dislocation of correction.

In fact, the compound interest of unearned blessing will continue to accumulate in the land as God's sovereignly places His people in the spiritual equivalent of timeout. Their experience of restoration will not need to be haunted by what might have been. Their heritage of grace cannot be claimed by anyone else. His mercy, declares Psalm 100:5, is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.

In fact, by the scope of the promise to Abraham, Gentiles are incorporated with his descendents. When we are moved from circumstances which seem like home to us, whether in a step of faith or in a gesture of correction, we can remember that this same sovereign prerogative is what enables us to claim an eternal home and identity with Psalm 106.

Remember me, the psalmist pipes up in Psalm 106:4-5 for us as Abraham's far-flung, grafted in descendents, O Lord, with the favor You have toward Your people, that I may have the benefit of Your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, that I may glory with Your inheritance.

Pluck me and move me where You will now, Lord, my root system is already established in You as the Root of Jesse, and my everlasting fruitfulness is guaranteed.

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