Jeremiah 24:6 – Preempting Pulled-Up Pessimism
5 “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent out of this place for their own good, into the land of the Chaldeans. 6 For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. Jeremiah 24:5-6, New King James Version
Writes Shakespeare in Anthony and Cleopatra of a kind of disorienting depression, "All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise." We become so convinced of our despondent narrative, he says, that it impacts how we see subsequent events. They, "proportion'd to our cause must be as great as that which makes it."
Knowing the depth of this bias toward what continues to deliver the extreme emotional fix, whether positive or negative, God uses the prophet who is so often an instrument of corrections, convictions, and even doom as an instrument of insistence that there is an other side to these unsettling events. Yes, those lives in whom He is producing good fruit will be plucked up. Yes, He wired us with a healthy sense of cause and effect which, thwarted, spins toward learned helplessness.
If sovereign God directly interfere with this crop coming up for theological and national reasons above my pay grade, why should I plant again? Why should I even get up in the morning when recent experience has taught me that so little is in my control?
His answer, brothers and sisters, is that His goodness is as real as His sovereignty. Yes, He can pluck up anyone at any time. We maintain a sense of humble awe before Him and remain poised to rewrite our sense of what is normal, but we also keep reading and keep living. If He upends our expectations as He will for Jeremiah's original audience, He also pledges Himself to acclimate us to the new normal, to place us where seedtime and harvest are our metronome again.
He knows we are but children, and that children need predictability and routine. Whatever our experience of disruption has been recently, we have no reason to doubt His goodness as expressed in an intimate knowledge of our new circumstances and ultimate destination. "The God of the mountain," connects Elevation Worship in "Graves into Gardens," is the God of the valley. There is not a place," they sing, re-centering themselves in God Who is continuity beyond circumstance, Your mercy and grace won't find me again."
The question is not His faithfulness but our state of minds and hearts. Will we continue to plant by faith, both materially and spiritually, when we have experienced jarring disappointment? Will we continue to harvest when the harvest, the payoff, might not look like we thought it would, trusting God to feed body, soul, and sense of purpose off the proceeds He has nurtured and protected? Whatever the weather, or wherever the trampling armies of men, He is growing a bountiful crop.
Writes Shakespeare in Anthony and Cleopatra of a kind of disorienting depression, "All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise." We become so convinced of our despondent narrative, he says, that it impacts how we see subsequent events. They, "proportion'd to our cause must be as great as that which makes it."
Knowing the depth of this bias toward what continues to deliver the extreme emotional fix, whether positive or negative, God uses the prophet who is so often an instrument of corrections, convictions, and even doom as an instrument of insistence that there is an other side to these unsettling events. Yes, those lives in whom He is producing good fruit will be plucked up. Yes, He wired us with a healthy sense of cause and effect which, thwarted, spins toward learned helplessness.
If sovereign God directly interfere with this crop coming up for theological and national reasons above my pay grade, why should I plant again? Why should I even get up in the morning when recent experience has taught me that so little is in my control?
His answer, brothers and sisters, is that His goodness is as real as His sovereignty. Yes, He can pluck up anyone at any time. We maintain a sense of humble awe before Him and remain poised to rewrite our sense of what is normal, but we also keep reading and keep living. If He upends our expectations as He will for Jeremiah's original audience, He also pledges Himself to acclimate us to the new normal, to place us where seedtime and harvest are our metronome again.
He knows we are but children, and that children need predictability and routine. Whatever our experience of disruption has been recently, we have no reason to doubt His goodness as expressed in an intimate knowledge of our new circumstances and ultimate destination. "The God of the mountain," connects Elevation Worship in "Graves into Gardens," is the God of the valley. There is not a place," they sing, re-centering themselves in God Who is continuity beyond circumstance, Your mercy and grace won't find me again."
The question is not His faithfulness but our state of minds and hearts. Will we continue to plant by faith, both materially and spiritually, when we have experienced jarring disappointment? Will we continue to harvest when the harvest, the payoff, might not look like we thought it would, trusting God to feed body, soul, and sense of purpose off the proceeds He has nurtured and protected? Whatever the weather, or wherever the trampling armies of men, He is growing a bountiful crop.
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