Lent 14

There are one or two things I don't know how to do. Stop on downhill skis and decipher wiring diagrams being chief among them. Happily, I am excellent at building a life that avoids bumping into these things that  I can not do. Most of the time.

Reading this morning, and of course imposing my own life as an overlay on these here Scriptures (I sense my grammar could use some tweeking here, but know no better way to have written that), I heard perhaps a small whisper to pay attention. To listen to David begging God to do something about all the things that were going wrong for him. To listen to Jeremiah telling Israel that God was supermad about how they forgot to ask the God who led them through the desert, to ask that God for direction when next they got lost. To listen to Paul reminding whoever it was he was writing to, that those Israelites got in trouble for worshipping and seving created things rather than the Creator. To listen to a story where a really successful guy who should be able to do anything stops and asks Jesus to do the thing he can not: heal his son.

One other thing I can not do is figure out a life for this family of mine. There is always a nagging Not Quite Right about things for me, and I think for my beloved also.  We have wondered often about changing everything, or maybe just adjusting a few things. But no thing has emerged The Thing to add or subtract. And so we muddle along, bothered always and settled not at all, wondering when we'll see where peace might be hiding.

I think I must wonder a bit more about which created things we are looking to for guidance here, about which idols we are setting up, about who we follow.

These feels a tiny bit on the impossible side. A bit like stopping on the downhill slope before I crash into that innocent crew of Ski Scampers.

And yet.

Jeremiah 2:1-13

New International Version (NIV)

Israel Forsakes God

2 The word of the Lord came to me: ² “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem:

“This is what the Lord says:

“‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
    how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
    through a land not sown.
³ Israel was holy to the Lord,
    the firstfruits of his harvest;
all who devoured her were held guilty,
    and disaster overtook them,’”
declares the Lord.

⁴ Hear the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob,
    all you clans of Israel.

⁵ This is what the Lord says:

“What fault did your ancestors find in me,
    that they strayed so far from me?
They followed worthless idols
    and became worthless themselves.
⁶ They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord,
    who brought us up out of Egypt
and led us through the barren wilderness,
    through a land of deserts and ravines,
a land of drought and utter darkness,
    a land where no one travels and no one lives?’
⁷ I brought you into a fertile land
    to eat its fruit and rich produce.
But you came and defiled my land
    and made my inheritance detestable.
⁸ The priests did not ask,
    ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who deal with the law did not know me;
    the leaders rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
    following worthless idols.

⁹ “Therefore I bring charges against you again,”
declares the Lord.
    “And I will bring charges against your children’s children.
¹⁰ Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
    send to Kedar^[a] and observe closely;
    see if there has ever been anything like this:
¹¹ Has a nation ever changed its gods?
    (Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
    for worthless idols.
¹² Be appalled at this, you heavens,
    and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
¹³ “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.