Jeremiah 30:14 – Stricken, to Scatter Infatuation

All your lovers have forgotten you;
They do not seek you;
For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy,
With the chastisement of a cruel one,
For the multitude of your iniquities,
Because your sins have increased. Jeremiah 30:14, New King James Version

"Knocking heroes off pedestals," writes Scott Lambert in his baseball biography Pujols,"is a spectator sport."

God warns of the fickle nature of people's adoration in Jeremiah 30:14. In fact, He will use its transience to prove how different He is. As His people begin to suffer some of the consequences of their sins, their shine comes off in the sight of those who once expressed interest. They are forgotten. Infatuation is quickly fixed on something or someone else.

But God engages in what He calls a kind of cruelty to a Divine end. As His people are less distracted by people telling them how beautiful they are, how splendid their blessings are, and how they will continue to enjoy them apart from discipline reliance on God, some of them will, like the prodigal son, come to themselves. Some of them will, by the grace of God, realize the sweet relationship they have lost and the comparative paucity of the temporary human connections they have gained.

Reaching to redeem them from such a place, with no beauty or strength remaining to recommend them, God will show His true character even to those too disillusioned to listen to His Word. "The rhetoric of liberation, reckons The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, "however grand, is no match for the liberated act, however fleeting."

And until we exit the flesh in its pulls and temptations, the particulars of our rescue will be fleeting. We will be distracted again. Even the allurements we fight off, thinking ourselves smarter and more mature this time, will contribute to our spiritual pride, and that is a predicament from which we need God's constant rescue. The devil's preference for pride's hold compared to other stratagems, says CS Lewis, is the potency of cancer compared to passing chilblains.

Knowing our vulnerability to pride when the world praised us, and to a different variety of perverse pride concerning the redemption process for which God is wholly responsible, He has given us the opportunity, indeed the command, to focus on rescuing others. "It takes time and effort," says a knowing Kurt Sams, "to get close enough to individuals to help them."

This, ideally, burns off much of the vanity that can so easily beset us. As we are focused on the peril of those we love, peril God acted against on our behalf, we realize how little strength we have to make a difference. We constantly ask for God's help and praise Him specifically when He intervenes through us. We are, then, even as we are transformed in the beauty of His likeness, more focused on Him then on any adoration we receive.


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