Jeremiah 30:18-19a – Continuity as Catalyst
18 “Thus says the Lord:
‘Behold, I will bring back the captivity of Jacob’s tents,
And have mercy on his dwelling places;
The city shall be built upon its own mound,
And the palace shall remain according to its own plan.
19
Then out of them shall proceed thanksgiving
And the voice of those who make merry. Jeremiah 30:18-19a, New King James Version
Screwtape's speech drips with condescension. In his thirteenth letter to his nephew, CS Lewis's fictional demon responds to a setback in which "the patient" they would work together to damn grows closer to God through an intimate worship experience. You should've known, he says.
"You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through the country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this? The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality."
Screwtape continues, "You were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have failed to see that a REAL pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn't you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value? And that sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel from his sensibility the kind of crust which you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, recovering himself? As a preliminary to detaching him from the Enemy," says Screwtape referring to God, "you want to detach him from himself."
Conversely, the Lord shows in Jeremiah 30:18-19a that He knows the very value in the little pleasures of coming home which Screwtape dreads. A tent, or a collection of them, is a humble thing compared to Heaven's splendor in which He dwells, but He doesn't underestimate its value as a means to restore a sense of self to men and prompt worship. The tents themselves in His message to Jeremiah represent the well-being of the people within them. I will bring back the captivity of Jacob's tents, God says, and have mercy on his dwelling places.
The physical prompts matter, God knows, as reminders to His people that all is not lost, that He Who dwelt with them in former, steadier times is with them still. Sure, mercy can supernatural forms like water from a rock, or a snake on a pole which produces healing, or the Son of Man lifted up on a cross and resurrected in three days. But the Father is so ready to remind us of His mercy, and so aware that we need these reminders, that He conveys it through tent flaps, and books, and old mills which are a metronome to His steadiness as contrasted with our flesh so forgetful and compulsively stirred up.
Even the grander things He does, even the palace as compared to the humble tents, the highlights on which we look back and say, "God was here," do they not have the ring of comforting familiarity? So it is that He in Whom there is no shadow of turning says Jerusalem the city on which He puts His name will be built upon its own mound, and the palace shall remain according to its own plan. In the best sense, He confirms there is nothing new under the sun. Grave as our sin is, dramatic though the distance it causes seems, it cannot deter His plans for us.
The detouring exiles on which our sin carries us, these just make the returns all the sweeter as we experience God's continuity of character through them. He isn't on His backup plan, jaded in doling out our probationary terms. He uses the pleasures we enjoy for their own sake to draw us back to Him, to help us see Him as the Source of that which is pure, lovely, and good, and, by His grace, to be a little less likely to wander for a NEW pleasure next time.
Humble to the point of underwhelming as subtle, bourgeois pleasures seem, the beginning of Jeremiah 30:19 shows they have a combustible impact. As God's people experience His supremacy proved, again, in tents and their contents, in familiar city streets restored, thanksgiving is collective and compounding. Our tendency to blame each other for what the enemy would tell us is forever lost is subsumed when we realize that it is not. We celebrate together for the diverse mercies and graces through which God demonstrates His love for each of His own
‘Behold, I will bring back the captivity of Jacob’s tents,
And have mercy on his dwelling places;
The city shall be built upon its own mound,
And the palace shall remain according to its own plan.
19
Then out of them shall proceed thanksgiving
And the voice of those who make merry. Jeremiah 30:18-19a, New King James Version
Screwtape's speech drips with condescension. In his thirteenth letter to his nephew, CS Lewis's fictional demon responds to a setback in which "the patient" they would work together to damn grows closer to God through an intimate worship experience. You should've known, he says.
"You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through the country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this? The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality."
Screwtape continues, "You were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have failed to see that a REAL pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn't you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value? And that sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel from his sensibility the kind of crust which you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, recovering himself? As a preliminary to detaching him from the Enemy," says Screwtape referring to God, "you want to detach him from himself."
Conversely, the Lord shows in Jeremiah 30:18-19a that He knows the very value in the little pleasures of coming home which Screwtape dreads. A tent, or a collection of them, is a humble thing compared to Heaven's splendor in which He dwells, but He doesn't underestimate its value as a means to restore a sense of self to men and prompt worship. The tents themselves in His message to Jeremiah represent the well-being of the people within them. I will bring back the captivity of Jacob's tents, God says, and have mercy on his dwelling places.
The physical prompts matter, God knows, as reminders to His people that all is not lost, that He Who dwelt with them in former, steadier times is with them still. Sure, mercy can supernatural forms like water from a rock, or a snake on a pole which produces healing, or the Son of Man lifted up on a cross and resurrected in three days. But the Father is so ready to remind us of His mercy, and so aware that we need these reminders, that He conveys it through tent flaps, and books, and old mills which are a metronome to His steadiness as contrasted with our flesh so forgetful and compulsively stirred up.
Even the grander things He does, even the palace as compared to the humble tents, the highlights on which we look back and say, "God was here," do they not have the ring of comforting familiarity? So it is that He in Whom there is no shadow of turning says Jerusalem the city on which He puts His name will be built upon its own mound, and the palace shall remain according to its own plan. In the best sense, He confirms there is nothing new under the sun. Grave as our sin is, dramatic though the distance it causes seems, it cannot deter His plans for us.
The detouring exiles on which our sin carries us, these just make the returns all the sweeter as we experience God's continuity of character through them. He isn't on His backup plan, jaded in doling out our probationary terms. He uses the pleasures we enjoy for their own sake to draw us back to Him, to help us see Him as the Source of that which is pure, lovely, and good, and, by His grace, to be a little less likely to wander for a NEW pleasure next time.
Humble to the point of underwhelming as subtle, bourgeois pleasures seem, the beginning of Jeremiah 30:19 shows they have a combustible impact. As God's people experience His supremacy proved, again, in tents and their contents, in familiar city streets restored, thanksgiving is collective and compounding. Our tendency to blame each other for what the enemy would tell us is forever lost is subsumed when we realize that it is not. We celebrate together for the diverse mercies and graces through which God demonstrates His love for each of His own
Comments
Post a Comment