Jeremiah 17:6 – Habitually Estranged
5 Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
6
For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.
"Self-reliance," the devotional You 2.0 takes the temperature, "quenches the fire for God and turns it into cold ashes. Hardships have the same effect."
So warns, by the back door, Jeremiah 17:6. The prophet counsels his countrymen about to be driven into exile that dependence on each other in such upheaval will be the natural recourse. But, he says, people are unfit repositories for ultimate trust and ultimate expectation of strength. People who go into human interactions with such expectations, he diagnoses, gradually give their hearts away.
Not only do we not get our expectations met by the latest hero or heroine in our story, we gradually develop a trenton, burned over narrative. Disappointed, by degrees we decide not to engage in any meaningful level with people. We set ourselves up instead as the shrub in the desert.
Jeremiah threatened that recourse to open chapter 9 when he was overwhelmed by his people's depravity. In order not to be let down, we inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, the salt lands where we know no nutrition and renewal will be found.
In such a state, we need Audio Adrenaline's prayer in "Fire Never Sleeps." "Lord, I never want to miss You as something new is being born." Without His intervention, Jeremiah 17:6 warns that we will. It warns that with sex practiced habits of defensiveness, bitterness, and low expectations, we will miss good when it comes.
The intertwined realities of Scripture or that there is none good but God AND that He often shows and applies His good through flawed humans. How can we, then, process through from adulation, to disappointment, to something like a reasonable expectation of our fellow humans? Only then can we perceive aspects of God's glory in the image-bearers He places in our lives?
The opening of Psalm 1 has a suggestion. It does suggest discernment in among whom we plant our roots. “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful." Still, lest we make idolatry out of the hermit's lifestyle in the desert, it continues. "But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.”
That is, His Word can be our consolation. It can be our renewal when people disappoint us. It can recalibrate our expectations when they soar too high or drop precipitously to the point where we might miss God's glory among men.
Will we maintain the habit in His Word even when we don't feel like it? Will we stay there and steep in it to the point of delight, to the point where we ooze delight when we take up in company again, to the point where we are, in the wonderful Puritan phrase, God-besotted?
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord.
6
For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.
"Self-reliance," the devotional You 2.0 takes the temperature, "quenches the fire for God and turns it into cold ashes. Hardships have the same effect."
So warns, by the back door, Jeremiah 17:6. The prophet counsels his countrymen about to be driven into exile that dependence on each other in such upheaval will be the natural recourse. But, he says, people are unfit repositories for ultimate trust and ultimate expectation of strength. People who go into human interactions with such expectations, he diagnoses, gradually give their hearts away.
Not only do we not get our expectations met by the latest hero or heroine in our story, we gradually develop a trenton, burned over narrative. Disappointed, by degrees we decide not to engage in any meaningful level with people. We set ourselves up instead as the shrub in the desert.
Jeremiah threatened that recourse to open chapter 9 when he was overwhelmed by his people's depravity. In order not to be let down, we inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, the salt lands where we know no nutrition and renewal will be found.
In such a state, we need Audio Adrenaline's prayer in "Fire Never Sleeps." "Lord, I never want to miss You as something new is being born." Without His intervention, Jeremiah 17:6 warns that we will. It warns that with sex practiced habits of defensiveness, bitterness, and low expectations, we will miss good when it comes.
The intertwined realities of Scripture or that there is none good but God AND that He often shows and applies His good through flawed humans. How can we, then, process through from adulation, to disappointment, to something like a reasonable expectation of our fellow humans? Only then can we perceive aspects of God's glory in the image-bearers He places in our lives?
The opening of Psalm 1 has a suggestion. It does suggest discernment in among whom we plant our roots. “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful." Still, lest we make idolatry out of the hermit's lifestyle in the desert, it continues. "But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.”
That is, His Word can be our consolation. It can be our renewal when people disappoint us. It can recalibrate our expectations when they soar too high or drop precipitously to the point where we might miss God's glory among men.
Will we maintain the habit in His Word even when we don't feel like it? Will we stay there and steep in it to the point of delight, to the point where we ooze delight when we take up in company again, to the point where we are, in the wonderful Puritan phrase, God-besotted?
As I read this, my mind too went to Psalm 1. The contrast of the man who trusts in man vs. the one who trusts in God is stark - a shrub in the desert on one hand, a tree planted by the water on the other. When you said that our broken trust in others drives us to withdraw from human interaction, it touched me deeply. For years, I purposefully remained withdrawn from all relationships to avoid the potential failure of others. However, I was, all the while, perpetuating a cycle of trust in myself and disappointment. Isolation migrates to self-hatred, the shrub in the desert engages in civil war against itself. What a beautiful remedy is the gospel that unites those who have never been trustworthy under the only one who deserves our trust and praise. He replants us by the living water and nourishes our deeply held pain and reticence to community as we are continually adorned as the bride for whom he gave his life.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting, however, that to maintain this community we must "maintain the habit in His Word." Current crisis aside, our roots must be watered by his goodness. Trees are incapable of watering other trees, community as an end in itself for betterment is humanism. Community that is characterized by selfless love and pursuit of godliness in the gospel is our aim. To attain this, we must remain close to his water.