A "Well duh!" Moment

I sat down in my favorite booth at the local cafe this morning to order my favorite breakfast and read my favorite prophet. You c'aint git no grits this far north (they think grits is the stuff left over on the road after they sand all winter), so I order biscuits and gravy, two eggs over easy on top, and pass the Tabasco. It's close as I can get to home without ordering fried chicken.

Anyway, I sat down in the booth, ordered decaf and breakfast, and started reading Jeremiah. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, Jeremiah is the bomb! God sends him out to preach and tells him, right up front, "Ain't gonna be easy, but don't you get discouraged, 'cause if you get dismayed by them, I'll dismay you before them." C'mon, you gotta love a job description that starts out, "They will fight against you but they shall not prevail against you."

So what was Jeremiah expecting? Chapter twelve records his complaint to God. "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?" What kind of question is that, don'tcha know? What did he think God meant? Did he think God was kidding when he said, "They will fight against you."

Maybe Jeremiah thought, "Gee, I'm a prophet of God. Surely everyone who loves God will love the messages I bring and the whole nation will treat me like a hero." They treated him like dirt. They threw him down a well and left him there. They ignored what he said. It was just like God told him. There would be occasions when he would be tempted to despair.

God answers Jeremiah's complaint in the latter half of chapter twelve. Essentially he says to Jeremiah, "If you think you have it bad, imagine how I feel! This is my house. These are my beloved. Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate place." God continues by promising to "pluck Judah" from among the nations that seek to destroy her. He promises to do them good after accounting for the bad they have done to him.

In case you were looking for a definition of grace, that's a good one.

Anyway, I'm reading through all this and smiling at the lessons God supplies faithful Jeremiah, when I get to chapter 13 verse 12. God gives Jeremiah a message to give to the people. It is a serious statement of the obvious. Jeremiah is to tell the people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Every jar shall be filled with wine.'" It's one doozy of a "well duh!" moment. The people respond, "Do we not know indeed know that every jar will be filled with wine?"

"Of course wine jars will be filled with wine, Jeremiah. What do you think wine jars are for? And don't you think we're smart enough to know wine jars will be filled with wine? What kind of message is this." I can just hear them, can't you. Sometimes, we get that response, don't we? We try to tell people about life, and God, and grace, and we get that response, "C'mon we already know all this. What's the big deal?"

Here's the big deal: God used a statement of the obvious as an introduction for a not so obvious announcement. Verse thirteen says, "Then you will say to them, 'Thus says the LORD: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land . . . and I will dash them one against another . . . I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.'"

Everybody stop and bow your head. God used the obvious to convey a less obvious message. The people were the wine jars and they were to be filled, not for storage but for destruction. Now, there's a time to make the same point about God's justice upon his people (and all people) in regard to sin, but what struck me this morning, was that, as the people responded to Jeremiah, they were stuck in earth-based, time-trapped, self-focused thinking. They did not expect Jeremiah to be providing a spiritual message and so they did not discern the spiritual message written on the face of the obvious. God was telling them more than they recognized.

Thank God Jeremiah kept talking. I've come to realize that God's warnings are occasions for grace. They are invitations to repent and find forgiveness and repair to the mercy and compassion of God before that mercy and compassion become unattainable.

Look for the message God is writing in the world around you. Look for the warning, or the grace, or the mercy that comes in a shooting, or a football game, or a sunset, or a sermon. It is likely there is more to them than the obvious, more than "well duh" can account for.