Jeremiah 27:19-22 – Portable Proxies

19 “For thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the pillars, concerning the Sea, concerning the carts, and concerning the remainder of the vessels that remain in this city, 20 which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon did not take, when he carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem— 21 yes, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that remain in the house of the Lord, and in the house of the king of Judah and of Jerusalem: 22 ‘They shall be carried to Babylon, and there they shall be until the day that I visit them,’ says the Lord. ‘Then I will bring them up and restore them to this place.’ ”Jeremiah 27:19-22, New King James Version

In The Good Wife, the title character and her two teen-aged children go through a kind of exile by no fault of their own. The husband and father who held their former lifestyle in place is embroiled in a scandal which results in his imprisonment, and the remaining three trade their former home for an apartment. There is a powerful scene in which they return to the former family home and find comfortable familiarity in the fact that the marks on the wall which advanced as the children's height did are still there.

We want that. We crave that. Sometimes, we insist upon it to the exclusion of all else. We zero in on one setting in which we can grow, and one measure of growth. Such pencil-depth stories don't serve as a nostalgic return but as an absolute measure of well-being.

Jeremiah 27:19-22, along with the journey of the family in The Good Wife serves to unsettle our insistent assumptions. For Jeremiah's audience in Judah, the measure of well-being is not the height of children as marked on the wall, but the vessels safe in God's Temple. Judah's religious leadership rests in a certain level of God's provision and protection because some of them are still there. Thus assured, partially, their prayers and prophecies are directed toward regaining the rest from the conquerors who are prevailing over them.

Jeremiah cautions against a one-dimensional measure of growth and God's purposes. Just as the teens at the center of The Good Wife storyline continued to grow even when their stature could not be marked off with reassuring continuity on the same wall at their former address, so God's purposes eclipsed one location and one unit of measurement. As His people cling to the notion of Temple vessels as well-being broadens their perspective with the message that, by that myopic measure, things will get worse before they get better.

But, meanwhile, God's sovereign purposes for His people's real growth will advance. They will see, He tells Jeremiah, His visitation in circumstances unfamiliar, unsettling, unmeasurable. Thus, Babylonians will know His glory. Thus people outside of God's main storyline will be used to return these vessels at the time HE deems appropriate. He will use the intervening time to loosen the association in His people's minds between the one metric they would use and His more comprehensive notion of progress.

Would we who know Christ as Temple, once brought down, yet everlastingly unshakable, tell the story of our growth in His likeness in similarly broad and grateful strokes? Where we would put our easily read marks on the wall to refer back to and, with pride, to make sure others see, U2 has a different take on real growth. They challenge in "Twilight," "Boy meets man in the shadows." Is that enough? Is His Presence enough to light our way, His Word guiding our steps in the stability in which to rejoice?

Does the absence of a predictable cadence toward happily ever after change the story we tell in the meantime? Yes, I conflated outward measures of God's favor with the favor itself. Yes, I presumed upon what He would preserve and what He would procure at my behest and on my timetable. Yet, He has been WITH me in more ways than can be tightly summarized. He has been WITH me in what seemed to be advances, and what seemed to be retreats.

Might the world notice the difference, as Po Bronson does in What Should I Do with My Life? He came across a subject who really wanted to be profiled for her linear ascent toward business success. As Bronson really began to relate to her as a more vulnerable, whole individual, insecurities and all, he was more drawn in. "I'd started to see real value, not so much in her story, but in how she was learning to tell her story."