Jeremiah 24:5a – Acknowledging the Good Fruit
“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those …" Jeremiah 24:5a, New King James Version
Franciscan Richard Rohr tells The New Yorker's Eliza Griswold that after a recent vision, "I'm trying to find my way to yes." He admits to the writer, "that he often wakes up in a state of no."
The prophet Jeremiah was a man who knew more than most the valid reasons for no. He had been told from the beginning of his mission as a young man that people would not respond to his calling, and this had been borne out in his ministry. He faced rejection from his own hometown and his own family. For his bravery in speaking up in the precincts of the Temple, he was put in the stocks. He was so broken by the hardness of the hearts around him that he comes down to history as the weeping prophet.
Yet, he finds his way to yes. With all he knows of depravity, he doesn't just see the rotten figs in the vision of Jeremiah 24, or their human equivalents. He is able to maintain equanimity and to respond to God's question without overgeneralization born of hard experience. You show me rotten figs, Lord, and You show me good ones. Do with both of those, and their combination, what You will.
And does the God of ever-renewal ever do so! As He has given Jeremiah the capacity to see and testify to the good figs in a rotting world so He even responds to Jeremiah's holy temerity. As Jeremiah prays the disciplined honesty that there are good figs along with the rotting ones, so God in His boundless grace and mercy equates this fruity fraction to how He sees humanity. He has preserved good among us. By His grace, we sometimes reflect His image back to Him.
This proportionate response on God's part doesn't stay within His breast. Its invigoration flows into the public testimony of His Word. The response of His great heart to the good that He preserves among men is that He will acknowledge it. His heart is not jaded or embittered. He is not withholding His good or His joy in case His elect disappoint Him, which we certainly will. God's is an ignitable heart, and it blazes in earthly and heavenly good toward His own.
We walk, then, in His ways. We make our way to yes, no matter how many reasons we can accrete to remain stolid in a safe no. The state of our hearts warms to the glow of Psalm 16:3 as we pray that we will consider God's work in "the saints of the earth," for, with the psalmist, "They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."
Flowing from the same sweet water of assurance that He can reflect His image even through fallen men and produce good fruit by them, we ask with CS Lewis's The Weight of Glory "Fill my mind with the truth that 'my neighbor' is 'the holiest object presented to my senses."
As we must make decisions among men rather than just begin with a vague warm feeling toward them until they disappoint our sense of God possibility, we will be made by His discerning work with the proverbial ability to "winnow out all evil" only as we discern it in proportion rather than overreaction. Aspires Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "Either naïveté or cynicism about people – habitually overtrusting or undertrusting motivations – will greatly hinder leadership effectiveness."
Ours in being and doing God's work is to see and savor the good fruit, that we might aspire to it with passions that will otherwise be turned aside to bitterness. Ours is to trust God's processes in planting and preserving a good crop, and to delight in being used in the same.
Franciscan Richard Rohr tells The New Yorker's Eliza Griswold that after a recent vision, "I'm trying to find my way to yes." He admits to the writer, "that he often wakes up in a state of no."
The prophet Jeremiah was a man who knew more than most the valid reasons for no. He had been told from the beginning of his mission as a young man that people would not respond to his calling, and this had been borne out in his ministry. He faced rejection from his own hometown and his own family. For his bravery in speaking up in the precincts of the Temple, he was put in the stocks. He was so broken by the hardness of the hearts around him that he comes down to history as the weeping prophet.
Yet, he finds his way to yes. With all he knows of depravity, he doesn't just see the rotten figs in the vision of Jeremiah 24, or their human equivalents. He is able to maintain equanimity and to respond to God's question without overgeneralization born of hard experience. You show me rotten figs, Lord, and You show me good ones. Do with both of those, and their combination, what You will.
And does the God of ever-renewal ever do so! As He has given Jeremiah the capacity to see and testify to the good figs in a rotting world so He even responds to Jeremiah's holy temerity. As Jeremiah prays the disciplined honesty that there are good figs along with the rotting ones, so God in His boundless grace and mercy equates this fruity fraction to how He sees humanity. He has preserved good among us. By His grace, we sometimes reflect His image back to Him.
This proportionate response on God's part doesn't stay within His breast. Its invigoration flows into the public testimony of His Word. The response of His great heart to the good that He preserves among men is that He will acknowledge it. His heart is not jaded or embittered. He is not withholding His good or His joy in case His elect disappoint Him, which we certainly will. God's is an ignitable heart, and it blazes in earthly and heavenly good toward His own.
We walk, then, in His ways. We make our way to yes, no matter how many reasons we can accrete to remain stolid in a safe no. The state of our hearts warms to the glow of Psalm 16:3 as we pray that we will consider God's work in "the saints of the earth," for, with the psalmist, "They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."
Flowing from the same sweet water of assurance that He can reflect His image even through fallen men and produce good fruit by them, we ask with CS Lewis's The Weight of Glory "Fill my mind with the truth that 'my neighbor' is 'the holiest object presented to my senses."
As we must make decisions among men rather than just begin with a vague warm feeling toward them until they disappoint our sense of God possibility, we will be made by His discerning work with the proverbial ability to "winnow out all evil" only as we discern it in proportion rather than overreaction. Aspires Tim Keller in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "Either naïveté or cynicism about people – habitually overtrusting or undertrusting motivations – will greatly hinder leadership effectiveness."
Ours in being and doing God's work is to see and savor the good fruit, that we might aspire to it with passions that will otherwise be turned aside to bitterness. Ours is to trust God's processes in planting and preserving a good crop, and to delight in being used in the same.
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