Jeremiads

[current book: 1 Corinthians]

[posting on: Jeremiah]

Now that I'm half-way through the New Testament, it seems bizarre to reminisce about the Prophets. But I can't help myself. With the possible tie of Paul's letters, the Prophets are hands-down my favorite portion of Scripture. I shot straight through them in a week out of sheer joy for what I was reading and would blog about them for pages and pages if I didn't have these time constraints.

For now, let it suffice to share at least one short thought on this mysterious, vivid, and paramount portion of Scripture: namely that of all that could be said about the Prophets, it is their closeness to God that strikes me most. Speaking his very words, they had insight not only into God's plan, but also God's perspective: they recorded how he saw things, and their hearts were sensitized to beat with his.

Yet these men of God were still men. For example, I love how Jeremiah, prophesying with fiery honesty the coming destruction of Jerusalem, still laments for his people:

               Oh, my anguish, my anguish! 
                   I writhe in pain. 
               Oh, the agony of my heart!
                   My heart pounds within me,
                   I cannot keep silent. 
               For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; 
                   I have heard the battle cry. (Jer. 4:19)

Or four chapters later:

               Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
                   I mourn, and horror grips me. (Jer. 8:21)

Sometimes I feel like this. It's a terrifying thing to realize that God is absolutely serious when he promises to judge all mankind. And while I don't fear that judgment because of the man who bore it for me, I remain a human being. 

Lately, I have not been able to look at a midnight sky without images of fire and wrath consuming an earth that deserves it. I revel that God is just in pouring out his wrath, but a part of me feels such a fierce kinship to my own species—saved or not—that my heart cannot help but unfurl a jeremiad of anguish.

All I can do is throw up my hands and declare that God is God. And that more stupefying than the gravity of his coming judgment is that which in light of that gravity becomes the most breathtaking truth imaginable: that "[b]ecause of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail" (Lam. 3:22).