Jeremiah 31:3 – Not Just a Rally, but a Romance
2 Thus says the Lord:
“The people who survived the sword
Found grace in the wilderness—
Israel, when I went to give him rest.”
3
The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3, New King James Version
It was a beautiful weekday morning at the University of South Carolina, and I had the whole day before me. If I wanted to study, which is what I was doing, I could give my whole heart to that. If I wanted to play, which is what my roommate Brent and his easy-going friend Jeff were doing on the other side of the room, I could do that.
Jones in the Fast Lane, a humor-loaded computer game that offered practice runs for real life decisions had them laughing and was an option for me. Think Monopoly but with individual goals in budgeting, fun, and career progress.
I was too grown-up for that, I thought. I was fuming. These kids, I actually thought as a curmudgeonly 20-year-old, not only are they frolicking on their side of things, they have broken my computer. I have to defend what's mine, I told myself, completely consumed with a cagey, combative mindset. I actually threatened to sue.
Jeff was incredulous that anybody would give away the joy of life so easily. "Told you," said Brent as he provided the missing cord and put my computer in working order again. Brent was giving me a window into my own heart, an opportunity to see my own god, but it would take me a long time to look through that window.
One goal would completely dominate my view, and then the next. Meet them or not, they didn't satisfy. But, mostly, enthusiasm was for other people, people who didn't know better how to talk about faith but still spend most of their actual energy on guard against other people's encroachments.
Not too long ago, I talked to Brent again. I gushed about what GOD was doing. My schemes were played out, my preoccupation to prove myself in people's eyes no longer predominated. The cerebral palsy symptoms which for so long goaded my pride with the idea that I had to DOMINATE the few areas I could control, impress at every opportunity, they turned out to be God's way to prove His strength in my weakness. The Disability benefits He engineered, my manna apart from my work and my worth, have allowed me to spend my time praying, reading, writing, and testifying in various ways to the goodness of God.
When I talked to Brent, who hasn't been noticeably harmed through the ups and downs of adult life by the fact that he expected to have fun in college, I talked to him about how excited I was about what God was doing in my life now. I'm getting better, I said, as I get to reflect on the big patterns and lasting lessons. I can hardly wait to see what He will do should He grant me 20 or 30 years to desire after His greater gifts, to continue to yield up a better offering as He puts the possibility within my reach.
When Brent and I prayed together, he again saw into my soul. A quarter-century on from the first reluctant diagnosis, he thanked the Lord for my latter-day zeal. "I can hear it in his voice," my patient friend rejoiced.
Knowing God's fondness for patterns even in the changes He renders, I see some of the same work in Jeremiah 31:2-3. Israel, God says in verse two, has been brought through battles, and not by their own might. Their story is HIS story. He is their banner, and as it turns out His reputation precedes them to such an extent that Rahab says her countrymen tremble in fear at what God will do through them. God points Jeremiah to a heart change He can enact along with changes in circumstances.
Look at Jeremiah 31:3, a cause for pause and praise no matter who is speaking. Israel? Has God changed that cagey curmudgeon, that fugitive suspicious at every turn, that conservator of old grudges even to Pharaoh at the end of his life?
He presaged as much, moving even Jacob on the run to see His glory as angels went up and down on a ladder to do God's bidding. Surely, ordinarily surly Jacob said, the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not. Is Jacob's song, his name and identity now forever changed from deceiver to prince, does HE now gush Jeremiah 31:3 on behalf of his progeny? Has the lovingkindness of God overrun his previous wariness in his eternal estimation? He has done so for me.
Or, maybe along with, the retrospective allowing them to see Jacob/Israel's changed heart, perhaps God through Jeremiah is giving Jeremiah's contemporaries an advance preview of what He will do in their hearts. Their contemporary song, much like Jeremiah's, has a lot of lament to it. Exile is real, and jarring, and just. It is a fraction of what their sins against His glory deserve. Resent it, and bitterness dominates their national song. Accept it as deserved, and even then a sense of condemnation can leave them playing a perpetual fugue.
Or, consider the possibility that Jeremiah is speaking in that verse. We should not put it past the long-suffering intercessor, advocate for his people but even more for the glory of God. Does he, more than his country's straying, personify Israel? What grace in even the possibility! The sensitive, sometimes frustrated prophet is so outweighed by every cultural indicator going in the wrong direction, yet we know God hears him. We know, better yet, believer, that the Father hears CHRIST on behalf of His covenant people, however lurching our signs of sanctification at any given moment. We are interceded for and heard, and that voice which declares the lovingkindness of the Father never grows hoarse.
Jeremiah, whether or not quoting himself, is the coach and conduit. He, inspired, pipes in a new song, the next song. I know not whether he thought about David's realization that sorrow lasts through the night, but joy comes in the morning, but we see on a national scale the same reason for resilience we have in our God.
Even with punishment present or pending, morning will come. We will get to sing a song of the redeemed, get to reflect on God's goodness throughout our often self-inflicted ordeals. Why not practice now? Why not declare the goodness of God now, even while some of the expressions of that goodness haven't yet been fully made manifest? This will give us opportunities to explain the hope that is within us.
Like whomever is speaking in Jeremiah 31:3, we can pick up a theme that has long been steeping, sweetening. This isn't just today's song, hatched whole in hopes of latching as an earwig interwoven into passing desires. As we begin to sense by faith what God is doing and is faithful to complete, we can incorporate continuity in our testimony. OF OLD, Israel now realizes and declares, lovingkindness has been God's calling card.
We have been loved with an everlasting love, evident even when we thought we were best served by setting our own terms and staking out their defense. Our found grace is still with us and will be to the end. Manna, it turns to worms, and so to the particulars of God's provision in a given situation.
Yet God's character is constant, His enthusiastic advocacy is relentless. Warm up the song. Rehearse it. Belt It. T'will be our theme in Glory. Like Casting Crowns memorably sings, our weakness and distractibility of body and mind means that we have a song even the angels can't sing.
“The people who survived the sword
Found grace in the wilderness—
Israel, when I went to give him rest.”
3
The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3, New King James Version
It was a beautiful weekday morning at the University of South Carolina, and I had the whole day before me. If I wanted to study, which is what I was doing, I could give my whole heart to that. If I wanted to play, which is what my roommate Brent and his easy-going friend Jeff were doing on the other side of the room, I could do that.
Jones in the Fast Lane, a humor-loaded computer game that offered practice runs for real life decisions had them laughing and was an option for me. Think Monopoly but with individual goals in budgeting, fun, and career progress.
I was too grown-up for that, I thought. I was fuming. These kids, I actually thought as a curmudgeonly 20-year-old, not only are they frolicking on their side of things, they have broken my computer. I have to defend what's mine, I told myself, completely consumed with a cagey, combative mindset. I actually threatened to sue.
Jeff was incredulous that anybody would give away the joy of life so easily. "Told you," said Brent as he provided the missing cord and put my computer in working order again. Brent was giving me a window into my own heart, an opportunity to see my own god, but it would take me a long time to look through that window.
One goal would completely dominate my view, and then the next. Meet them or not, they didn't satisfy. But, mostly, enthusiasm was for other people, people who didn't know better how to talk about faith but still spend most of their actual energy on guard against other people's encroachments.
Not too long ago, I talked to Brent again. I gushed about what GOD was doing. My schemes were played out, my preoccupation to prove myself in people's eyes no longer predominated. The cerebral palsy symptoms which for so long goaded my pride with the idea that I had to DOMINATE the few areas I could control, impress at every opportunity, they turned out to be God's way to prove His strength in my weakness. The Disability benefits He engineered, my manna apart from my work and my worth, have allowed me to spend my time praying, reading, writing, and testifying in various ways to the goodness of God.
When I talked to Brent, who hasn't been noticeably harmed through the ups and downs of adult life by the fact that he expected to have fun in college, I talked to him about how excited I was about what God was doing in my life now. I'm getting better, I said, as I get to reflect on the big patterns and lasting lessons. I can hardly wait to see what He will do should He grant me 20 or 30 years to desire after His greater gifts, to continue to yield up a better offering as He puts the possibility within my reach.
When Brent and I prayed together, he again saw into my soul. A quarter-century on from the first reluctant diagnosis, he thanked the Lord for my latter-day zeal. "I can hear it in his voice," my patient friend rejoiced.
Knowing God's fondness for patterns even in the changes He renders, I see some of the same work in Jeremiah 31:2-3. Israel, God says in verse two, has been brought through battles, and not by their own might. Their story is HIS story. He is their banner, and as it turns out His reputation precedes them to such an extent that Rahab says her countrymen tremble in fear at what God will do through them. God points Jeremiah to a heart change He can enact along with changes in circumstances.
Look at Jeremiah 31:3, a cause for pause and praise no matter who is speaking. Israel? Has God changed that cagey curmudgeon, that fugitive suspicious at every turn, that conservator of old grudges even to Pharaoh at the end of his life?
He presaged as much, moving even Jacob on the run to see His glory as angels went up and down on a ladder to do God's bidding. Surely, ordinarily surly Jacob said, the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not. Is Jacob's song, his name and identity now forever changed from deceiver to prince, does HE now gush Jeremiah 31:3 on behalf of his progeny? Has the lovingkindness of God overrun his previous wariness in his eternal estimation? He has done so for me.
Or, maybe along with, the retrospective allowing them to see Jacob/Israel's changed heart, perhaps God through Jeremiah is giving Jeremiah's contemporaries an advance preview of what He will do in their hearts. Their contemporary song, much like Jeremiah's, has a lot of lament to it. Exile is real, and jarring, and just. It is a fraction of what their sins against His glory deserve. Resent it, and bitterness dominates their national song. Accept it as deserved, and even then a sense of condemnation can leave them playing a perpetual fugue.
Or, consider the possibility that Jeremiah is speaking in that verse. We should not put it past the long-suffering intercessor, advocate for his people but even more for the glory of God. Does he, more than his country's straying, personify Israel? What grace in even the possibility! The sensitive, sometimes frustrated prophet is so outweighed by every cultural indicator going in the wrong direction, yet we know God hears him. We know, better yet, believer, that the Father hears CHRIST on behalf of His covenant people, however lurching our signs of sanctification at any given moment. We are interceded for and heard, and that voice which declares the lovingkindness of the Father never grows hoarse.
Jeremiah, whether or not quoting himself, is the coach and conduit. He, inspired, pipes in a new song, the next song. I know not whether he thought about David's realization that sorrow lasts through the night, but joy comes in the morning, but we see on a national scale the same reason for resilience we have in our God.
Even with punishment present or pending, morning will come. We will get to sing a song of the redeemed, get to reflect on God's goodness throughout our often self-inflicted ordeals. Why not practice now? Why not declare the goodness of God now, even while some of the expressions of that goodness haven't yet been fully made manifest? This will give us opportunities to explain the hope that is within us.
Like whomever is speaking in Jeremiah 31:3, we can pick up a theme that has long been steeping, sweetening. This isn't just today's song, hatched whole in hopes of latching as an earwig interwoven into passing desires. As we begin to sense by faith what God is doing and is faithful to complete, we can incorporate continuity in our testimony. OF OLD, Israel now realizes and declares, lovingkindness has been God's calling card.
We have been loved with an everlasting love, evident even when we thought we were best served by setting our own terms and staking out their defense. Our found grace is still with us and will be to the end. Manna, it turns to worms, and so to the particulars of God's provision in a given situation.
Yet God's character is constant, His enthusiastic advocacy is relentless. Warm up the song. Rehearse it. Belt It. T'will be our theme in Glory. Like Casting Crowns memorably sings, our weakness and distractibility of body and mind means that we have a song even the angels can't sing.
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