August 3, 2001
Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed;
save me and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise.
v
They keep saying to me,
"Where is the word of the LORD?
Let it now be fulfilled!"
I have not run away from being your shepherd;
you know I have not desired the day of despair.
What passes my lips is open before you.
Do not be a terror to me;
you are my refuge in the day of disaster.
Let my persecutors be put to shame,
but keep me from shame;
let them be terrified,
but keep me from terror.
Bring on them the day of disaster;
destroy them with double destruction.
Jeremiah 17:14-18
One more time Jeremiah pours out his heart and his anxieties to God. He is being ridiculed because of the message God gave him to preach... he's been faithful to his calling and yet it seems that God isn't doing the things that were prophesied. He begs to be healed form his pain, saved from what he's going through, that God will avenge him.... and honest heartfelt cry... and yet there is no response from God. Why? Why is God so silent at times? I was thinking about Wendy's lesson on Wednesday and that we expect everything to come quickly including answers from God. It is my tendency to be frustrated and confused when God doesn't make clear what he's doing in my life... when I want him to. It is very much God's character to make people wait or to wrestle through things for long periods of time... not because he's mean, cruel or heartless! That is not our God... but rather he wants us to...
"...be still and know that I am God"
--Psalm 46:10
God is best understood in the silence of life and many times I need to be pushed to go there... in the silence I have time to search my heart and my thoughts. It reveals what I think and really believe about God and his faithfulness... things I might otherwise not get to. I've noticed when God is silent I go through a process... many times (but not always) starting with the negative aspects -- the situation, myself, my frustrations, my insecurities and fears all run through my mind. This isn't working according to the little plan I had mapped out in my head! At those moments I am anxious or in torment and I want relief... now. But sometimes God is still silent... it is then when I come to the end of my thinking, my reasoning, my understanding that I finally see God. I then think about who he is, what he might be doing, things he's done in the past etc... and I realize that in the silence God has taught me many things.