The Overshadowing Personal Deliverance

Jeremiah did not have a fun life. He preached a message of condemnation to a people who did not want to hear it. He foresaw doom and destruction for his entire country. He was persecuted, arrested, mocked, thrown in a cistern (something like a well -- deep enough that he had to be drawn out with a rope), saw his life's work -- a scroll which contained all his messages up to that time -- torn to pieces, and had the unwelcome distinction of being right when being right meant ruin. Some historical accounts say he was stoned to death.

An online commentary by J. Philip Hyatt at bookrags.com adds this: "Jeremiah was by nature sensitive, introspective and perhaps shy. He was denied participation in the ordinary joys and sorrows of his fellowmen and did not marry. He thus could say, 'I sat alone,' with God's hand upon him. Jeremiah had periods of despondency when he expressed the wish that he had never been born or that he might run away and live alone in the desert. He . . . even accused God of deceiving and overpowering him. Yet there were times of exaltation when he could say to God, 'Thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.'"

Justice. What an odd and multi-faceted word. Our hearts yearn for it on the one hand, and on the other, we know that none of us could stand in the face of it. God requires us to show it, and Oswald writes that we must not seek it for ourselves.

Today is my brother Pat's birthday, and so as I write this, I cannot help but think about his life in connection with these concepts. If God were to invite me, I might ask him, "Why have you treated my brother so? He is one of the hardest working, most God-fearing, sacrificial men I know. He loves you. He longs body and soul to do what is right in your eyes, and yet he, like Jeremiah, sits alone." God, of course, knows the rest of the story much more clearly than I -- the messy divorce, the betrayal, the pain, the rebellion of his children. Have you taken notice, Lord, of your servant Pat?

The health and wealth Gospel fails so completely to address life as most of us know it. Oswald's words ring so much truer: "If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says -- Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life." Less immediately comforting perhaps, but true.