Jeremiah 31:16b-17 – Futility Fulfilled

For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,
And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
17
There is hope in your future, says the Lord,
That your children shall come back to their own border. Jeremiah 31:16b-17, New King James Version


John Piper dropped the idea of grace-driven effort into my combustible mind that fires on phrases, but I remember when seeing what it looks like worked the sentiment into my affections and began to change me. Casting a glance to a now quiet corner of my living room, I remember where I was sitting, uncharacteristically all in in intention. It is now something like holy ground.

My wife and I were foster parents to a beautiful, sinewy conflagration of enthusiasm I will refer to as Little One out of respect for social services policy asking that I not name her on social media. As with her foster father, Little One's fascination was focused. She was learning to crawl, and I was learning the comprehensive meaning of faith.

On the relatively slick wooden floor, she kept splaying out on her belly, and kept pushing herself up on all fours. She would rock, uncertain but intrigued. She would move this appendage, and then that one, never quite coordinating all four into measurable progress toward her ends.

Her eyes showed resolve, but her radiant smile never departed. The thing itself, the process fueled her joy. Futility? Frustration? They were still strangers, perhaps kept at a distance for a while by the angelic protection Jesus says is always before the face of the Father on behalf of Little Ones
.
Her foster father, though, had learned the, "Yeah, right," the eye roll, the vague yet pervasive sense of disappointment permeating efforts in a fallen world. His calculations permeated as soon as reluctant, consternated effort went forward. He knew what it was to let "should" hang oppressively over his own efforts, to tolerate accusation against himself, and, worse, from himself to his God. The sense that quests for purpose, progress, dominion are a set-up for satire lingered, but it was now ever so gradually in retreat.

Jeremiah 36:16-17, then, dares renewed aspiration. The people whose return God foretells through Jeremiah need more than bodily return to the land promised to Abraham. Uprooted, deprived of any sense about locus of control, they need recommissioning.

They need to know that the world, though sometimes painful, though sometimes the means of delivering God's chastening, is not random. Thereby rings the thunderous voice of His affirmation, not so different from calling Christ His well-pleasing Son. Your works shall be rewarded. Because I'm faithful when you are faithless, the Father says, you will get to harvest what you sow this time. Grace-driven effort will pay off.

Then He blows on the coals of jaded hopes. Fully entitled to command that His returned exiles venture by faith, work for Him a grateful return He fully deserves, got the Master Motivator speaks their language, stretches their hope in a more easily visible way.

Your kids are coming back, He paints as Holy Tantalizer. Let them embody My Word, He proposes. Let the next generation give more immediate purpose to YOUR work, and let their fascination with life be My delivery system for renewing your hopes. In some sense Rabindranath Tagore was right. "“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

Of course, the actualization of this from sentiment to salvation came in Jesus. He came as a baby. He lived a life of perfectly righteous communion with His Father through the very earthly routines that dull our sense of gratitude and wonder. His life and His willing death pointed to a hope and a future man could not despoil. He came, indeed, within the borders of our experience. He grew in our eyes, and meanwhile he expanded exponentially our sense of what we Father gives by grace. He gives His Son, and through Him all things forever.

Because of Christ, we don't labor in vain. The ground may still produce thistles, and our bodies will return to it as the sin curse of Genesis 3 dictates. Yet, as He summons, we will arise. As He rewards, we will since purpose we thought lost. Our works, by grace, shall be rewarded. We will be coheirs with Christ, and we will inherit with those to whom He allows us to pass on faith. We will, as we watch them grow in grace, be renewed and rekindled ourselves, made ever more grateful for His ongoing work in us.

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