When it is all said and done <3
I finished Jeremiah today and it’s been a roller coaster.
I ponder the big push in Christian literature to find your calling and join God’s big adventure for your life…but I wonder.
How eager would we be to seek the “call” if the call was to be a weeping prophet?
But the call is irrevocable and whether Jeremiah was wired to weep or was God-shaped into what He needed to be…it was God who called him…at a young age…
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you to be a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:4,5
While I have read through the Bible a number of times during the course of a year, and have certainly read parts and all of Jeremiah before, I have seen new things this time.
As I try and identify with the obedience of this prophet, I have been convicted in my own prone-to-compromise-to-avoid-conflict-ways.
Since my current text of the Chronological Bible puts everything in time line fashion, I discovered the ending of Jeremiah’s life is very different than I might have gleaned from my NKJV.
In my every day Bible, the ending chapters of the book are actually an addition to the end of the story. Scholars debate if it was written by Jeremiah or by one of his scribes. There is consensus for it as an historical record of the fall of Jerusalem.
They occurred before the end of Jeremiah’s story.
Jeremiah’s story ended in Egypt.
Where he was carried off by a rebellious remnant of Jews who hoped to flee from Nebuchadnezzar and the discipline of God for their idol worship.
And even in Egypt, as they blinked away the smoke of incense burning in their homes to the gods of that land…they continued to ask Jeremiah for a word from the Lord.
He continued to say the same word, because God’s Word doesn’t change no matter how much we would like it to so that we can continue doing what we want to do.
In defiance, they shouted him down with the affirmation that they LIKED what they were doing…and they weren’t going to stop.
The women pointed to how things were so much better when they did the wrong thing.
They were happy and well-fed and prospering.
And so Jeremiah speaks one more prophesy regarding the inevitable fall of Babylon and we are left with this passage…
The words of Jeremiah end here. Jeremiah 51:64
How can so few words carry such a heavy message?
He spoke all God called him to speak and then he ceased.
Whether anyone listened or cared or changed, he fulfilled the call of God and then he ceased.
It is believed he was stoned to death by the stubborn people he tried to warn.
But his voice is not silent.
It speaks God’s heart to us now.
Whatever you are called to do or say…do it…until you are silenced.
Fulfill the call of God on your life, trusting in Him alone <3