In Jeremiah 36 one has to admire the way the prophet bounces back after his prophecy that the scribe Baruch had carefully copied down and read in the Temple, was later burned by Jehoichim, king of Judah and his servants. At the end of that chapter Jeremiah and Baruch rebound wonderfully teaming up again to painstakingly make another copy. The last verse of the 36th chapter reads: “And many other words like them were added.” It was even better, that is, the second time around. Jeremiah and Baruch did not waste the reversal experience, they made sure it counted for gain.
We are called upon daily to risk rejection the way Jeremiah and Baruch surely did. They not only risked it, they experienced it. When we stretch out our necks to speak a word for Jesus, or when we organize or present ourselves for some event or other to which it could be that few if any will attend. When we exercise or attempt to exercise the spiritual gifts with which we’ve been entrusted, we will not always be encouraged, to say the least. But perhaps we can develop thick enough skin not to be discouraged when ignored or rejected, or ridiculed. Instead we must familiarize ourselves with that position of risk, standing and even making ourselves at home in that gap where all of the prophets and apostles, and evangelists learned to operate, and even thrive.
This is a great lesson for us that when we are faced with do-overs, even in little ways, we can make not a duplicate of what we originally did, but instead a rendition that is somehow different and superior in quality over the first attempt. This way we are assured that we haven’t wasted our time, or that we haven’t allowed anyone else, either, to waste our time. This is a portion of scripture that Henry David Thoreau might have appreciated, expecially when he said, “We can’t kill time without injuring eternity.”
The message the king had burned had to do with the coming of the army of Babylon to destroy everything in its path and to carry Israel away captive. Jeremiah was exhorting the people not to resist this onslaught if they wanted their lives to be preserved. He knew it would only be a temporary calamity, that one day the captives would return and buy and sell houses and property, and celebrate weddings and openly rejoice with brides and grooms who would have everything to live for and every reason for hope. Consistent with this conviction Jeremiah bought land from a relative before several witnesses, a totally counterintuitive act. Who would buy land they knew would almost immediately be overrun by a foreign enemy? Only someone who was distinctly led by the Spirit of God and who was by the power of that same Spirit was able to live in the reality of the age to come.
Is this not what we as believers and members of the family and kingdom of God are called upon to do? Living by faith in the reality of an unseen kingdom now in the present before it becomes external and far more evident to the physical senses. Jeremiah was a man from Israel’s future, and we are a heavenly people from the future of the earth, beginning now in whatever ways we can till heaven’s will is fully done on earth and heaven descends at last to earth!
trbarlow 