Jeremiah 31:19 – Young Hearts Before God

Surely, after my turning, I repented;
And after I was instructed, I struck myself on the thigh;
I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated,
Because I bore the reproach of my youth.’ Jeremiah 31:19, New King James Version

On the sitcom The King of Queens, Doug Heffernan is accommodating himself to unemployment. He visits his sister who is a gym teacher at his old high school, looking for sympathy. She tells him he ought not be too hard on himself for this interlude. He's been working hard since… She pauses. The story is a little less sympathetic since his work history, the definition of adult responsibility in her narrative, only goes back to Doug's mid-20s. It's a fairly flexible definition of youth.

Her generous recasting has nothing on the grace to which God sees Ephraim's story in Jeremiah 31:19. Having been brought through Jeremiah 31:18's full-fledged confession of intense sorrow over sin, of seeing himself corrected and trained by God as a result of it and more personally identified with God as a result, verse 19 is Ephraim's internalization, his repeat of the narrative. Again, there is conviction. He, a man personifying a tribe, strikes himself on the thigh. Even having recalled in verse 18 that God uses this for the good, Ephraim doesn't discount the reality of shame, humiliation, and reproach as part of what God used.

But the remarkable part of the grace-filled state of mind which God grants is at the end of Jeremiah 31:19. He, a man representing a tribe, a tribe hardened in its habits for hundreds of years, a tribe which did not live up to the promise Joseph foretold in Genesis 48, that tribe is seen as still maturing in the eyes of God. Whatever has gone before, by grace Ephraim sees as the reproach of his youth. Better things, he declares in the sanctum of inspired Scripture, are ahead than what lays behind.

What grace! What an opportunity to re-examine what we bring into today! Our heredity and our environment, by the grace of God, don't wholly constitute who we are. Compared to what God can do with the mercies that are His to bestow this morning, all the habits we have carried forward from our tribe are but the sins of our youth. The intensity of our deepest remorse, shame, and humiliation, these have been but the prompts forcing us to re-examine who we are, and who we will be going forward.

New youth, real youth, is ours in Christ in a way Ephraim could have only partially foreseen. In Christ, Anna and Simeon in Luke 2 are invigorated in their old age by the new life in Christ with which they identify. Nicodemus who was at first scandalized by the metaphor of an old man being born again indeed stakes his life to Christ's death and identifies with His execution. He renews, foretold the prophet Isaiah, our youth like the eagle's. We rise in Him as we confess, as we leave behind the former things, no matter how long we have carried them or allowed them to render us inert. The choices we made, as MercyMe sings in "Dear Younger Me," are the choices that made us, that brought us to this point, but they don't have to forecast where we end up.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enthusiasm, Even If We Have To Work At It

On Fixer Upper, a real estate renovation show, perpetually upbeat contractor Chip Gaines faces the usual list of hassles incumbent in his work with the reflection that his father's greatest gift to him was to show him that work could be fun. Conversely, as I asked my usual questions of a new acquaintance in Bible study about what he looks for in new hires, he shared separately that enthusiasm can't be trained. I can't, he said, teach you to have fun at your job. The two insights are not necessarily contradictory. Chip's father had a prolonged impact on his attitude toward work at a time when Chip's child heart was as flexible as the body of an infant who can peacefully fall asleep in postures an adult would find uncomfortable if not crippling. The cafeteria manager spoke to the rest of us who either were not presented with that inspirational outlook or who have been distracted from that by work's more aggravating aspects. For those of us who don't come b
Read more

A Hobby Or A Habit?

Chris is a firefighter's firefighter.  He is passionate about the equipment. He is passionate about the people he gets to help. He is passionate about the honor of a career in the fire service. He is passionate enough to attend a training to sharpen his skills on his vacation time. When a college kid at the same training referred to firefighting as a hobby, Chris was not passionate in affirming that kind of divided enthusiasm. Would he have my back, Chris questioned? Would he rescue someone on the second floor if doing so involved in some personal risk?   Chris didn't have a chance to ask these questions or confront this attitude during the brief training. Perhaps someone else in a more long-standing relationship with this kid will have the opportunity fo model professionalism and to extend it to confrontation where necessary. If not, the progression is predictable, and extends far beyond firefighting. Observing a similarly nonchalant attitude in a young pitcher, Michael Lew
Read more

While It Is Still Called Today

About a month ago, my brother was in an auto accident. When I asked about subsequent trouble with his back, he was philosophical. What happened, he said, was that my back tightened in order to protect my spinal cord. Now, anytime I'm under stress or try to lift anything, even something small, the same response kicks in. I have to retrain myself. Retrain himself he did. A lifelong independent person and freethinker who tends to shun accolades or confirmation from the crowd, on social media or otherwise, he nevertheless posted a picture on Facebook of his graduation from physical therapy. He could now return to work. Perhaps it was in the spirit of celebrating the celebratory, the completion of his first week back on the job with the shift that ended about 11, that he decided to defy middle-age and go to hear his uncle's band. When he left, it was raining heavily. The car was new to him. It collided with a concrete barrier. He totaled the car and broke a couple ribs, but human vu
Read more