Lamentations 3:24–25
Most of us know the strange quiet of a waiting room. The muffled television, the magazines nobody reads, the clock that seems to move slower than it should. Somebody else has the news. All we can do is sit there and wait for it.
Continue reading “The Only Portion That Lasts”
Lamentations 2:14
Most of us know the difference between a friend who tells us what we want to hear and one who tells us the truth. One feels better in the moment. The other may hurt, but it’s the friend we need most.
Continue reading “What They Wanted to Hear”
Jeremiah 37:17
Most of us know what it is to want a word from God. Not a sign in the sky, just some quiet sense that He sees what we are facing and has something to say about it. The trouble is, that hunger usually shows up after we have spent a long time keeping His voice at arm’s length. That was Zedekiah’s problem, and he is about the last man we would expect to come looking.
Continue reading “Is There Any Word from the Lord?”
Jeremiah 35:5-6
Most of us know what it feels like to be the only person in the room saying no. Everyone else seems comfortable with the choice. Going along would be easier, and we can usually find a good reason to do it. That is when a conviction stops being an idea and becomes a decision.
Continue reading “When Convictions Are Tested”
Jeremiah 32:27
The city was surrounded. Babylon’s army had been camped outside Jerusalem’s walls for months, and everyone inside knew it was only a matter of time. That’s when God told Jeremiah to do something that must have seemed completely insane: buy a piece of land.
Not just any land. Land in the path of the very army closing in. Jeremiah paid good money for a field in Benjamin, signed the deed, sealed it in a clay jar, and handed it over. His reason was simple. God said that one day, people would buy and sell land in Israel again. Life would return. Restoration was coming. The purchase was a sign of faith in a future only God could see.
Continue reading “What a Good Father Does”
Jeremiah 31:3
There is a thought that creeps in on most of us at some point, usually late at night or in the quiet after a hard week. The thought that maybe we have gone too far this time. That we have wandered too long, or failed too often, and that somewhere along the way, God quietly stopped looking for us.
Continue reading “A Love That Never Lets Go”
Jeremiah 26:1-3
There is something uncomfortable about a man who keeps saying the same thing no matter how you respond to him. You can ignore him, argue with him, threaten him, and he just keeps saying it. Jeremiah was that kind of man. Not because he was stubborn, but because the word he carried wasn’t his own.
Continue reading “What Voice Are You Listening To?”
(Jeremiah 23:23-24, ESV)
Most of us have said it at one time or another. The day gets full, the demands pile up, and somewhere in the middle of it all we mutter, “I wish there were two of me.” It’s a familiar feeling. We’re bound by where we are. We can only be in one place at a time, and the older we get, the more we feel the weight of that. There’s simply never enough of us to go around.
Continue reading “He Fills Heaven and Earth”
(Jeremiah 23:5–6)
There’s a particular kind of disappointment that comes from being misled by someone you trusted. Not betrayed by an enemy but misled by someone who was supposed to tell you the truth and didn’t.
Continue reading “When the Shepherds Fail”