Jeremiah Post

This is a post I have taken a lot of consideration to write.
What I have to say in this post is not easy. It's hard teaching. It's personal. It's scary. It's the most liberating discovery of my life.
Jeremiah was born at a turbulent time in the history of ancient Israel. After the prosperous lives of King David and King Solomon the kingdom split in two. The usurper north took the name Israel, the southerners loyal to King David's line took the name Judah.
After hundreds of years of intrigue, backstabbing, idolatry and revival an overarching truth was catching up with the two nations: "Be sure your sins will find you out." It was in this climate that Israel fell to the Assyrian Empire. It's people were carried off. The land was razed. New settlers were brought in. Israel was now a nation in exile.
The good king Hezekiah was able to avoid a similar disaster. In time Assyria fell to the new Babylonian Empire. But after Hezekiah came Manasseh. He was the worst of them. His filth filled the land. Judah entered a downward spiral. The reigns of the next kings would be short and violent. There would be times of great repentance and great relapse. The big question was this: Would Judah live up to it's founding idea? A nation living for God.
It was during the last of the revivals that Jeremiah was born. When he was still young God spoke to him for the first time. These are the first words of prophesy in Jeremiahs book, "The word of the LORD came to me saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.'"
The book of Jeremiah is like a personal diary. It contains the outpourings of his heart. Page upon page of prophecy. You begin to see the picture of a God pleading with a nation He loves, through a man who loves that nation too. The message is simple. Turn away from the self-consuming, self-harming practises, and become what Judah is meant to be. What it was made for. A place of justice, peace, and mercy. A picture of life with God.
But the book contains an undertone. The knowledge that the message will hit deaf ears.
Jeremiah pours his life into this message, this hopeless pleading. He never marries, he is hated, persecuted, locked in stocks, jailed, almost dies in a cistern, barely escapes assassination. But worse then all this is the emotional toll. Jeremiah loves his people. A people he knows isn't listening. The words in Jeremiah 20 frame his brokenness, "O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; You overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. But if I say, 'I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name,' His word is in my heart like fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot."
When time has run out Babylon destroyed Judah, carried off the best and brightest of the people and razed the land. The message of hope fell on deaf ears. The people Jeremiah loved and gave his life to destroyed themselves.
Jeremiah wrote another book. It's name is Lamentations; "a song of grief". Jeremiah morns the loss of his beloved. And dies.
So what is it about Jeremiah that makes me take his name like Jacob?
It's because for a long time I was lost in the lie that the West tells us. That life is all about obtaining happiness. Living a life of prosperity and simple joys. And I felt like a failure, like I was being cheated in life, because my life isn't about that. Because although I know I'm going to have a lot of good things in life, the road I've chosen is marked with suffering.
But in truth that is OK. Because life can be about a million things other then happiness.
Jeremiah pleaded with the people he loved, a people that mistreated him, a people who were destroying themselves with there actions. He pleaded because he loved them, and watching them was fire to his soul. Those people were his passion. So he made his life about pleading with them, whether he was heard or not.
In the same way my life is about pleading with those around me, to stop the self-harming practices of the modern world, and become what they were born to be. Images of the living God. His beloved children.
And I'll plead even when I know no one will listen. Because I love them enough to try. Because God put a fire in my bones. And in the end, I would rather pour my life out like Jeremiah then live a life focused on obtaining more happiness.