Jer 23:5-8 / Mt 1:18-25
The prophet Jeremiah was a member of the ruling elite in Israel, so he had a “bully pulpit” for uttering his dire warnings to his fellow citizens. But it did him no good because no one wanted to hear bad news, even if it was the truth. Thus Jeremiah found himself reviled and imprisoned as he watched his people carried off into captivity.
But the story didn’t end there, for Jeremiah understood that the ruin of his country and the extended captivity of most of its citizens in a strange land did not constitute a final rejection by God. Faith told him that there was more to come: God had chastened his people, not rejected them. Thus he looked forward with confident expectation to that day when his countrymen would be restored to their homeland. He never surrendered that hope, and in the end history proved him right.
How often in the course of our lives we find ourselves at a low point with no visible avenue of escape and no clear reason to look forward to the renewal of our dreams. Those moments come in every life, and they cannot be avoided. How we respond to them is what distinguishes Jesus’ followers from all others.
If we have truly given our lives to him, then those moments become occasions of grace, when our hearts are opened wide to receive his guidance and hear his word and perhaps to change course quite radically. His promise to us is not for immunity from pain or even defeat. His promise is that he will stand by us, faithfully providing the spiritual strength (grace) we need to face whatever comes and guaranteeing that, no matter what, he will not allow what is the essence of us to be destroyed.
That was Jeremiah’s faith and it can be ours, a life of confident expectation, grounded in the understanding that, even on our bad days, God loves us even more than we love ourselves.
