Coming to Us
December 22, 2019
The Rough Reality
December 8, 2019
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, the divine voice tells the prophet – cry out with a new message of deliverance. This is an imperative to speak to the heart of the people who have suffered so much. They needed to hear a word of encouragement and comfort, to move them forward into a new reality. They needed prophetic imagination, to see the new thing God was doing in them and with them.
Good Things to Come
December 1, 2019
The people couldn’t see it – how could they have believed it? If they looked around, they could only see injustice, the conquerors had destroyed the temple, the people had gone after ‘worthless things and became worthless themselves’ (Jer. 2:5). The land had been defiled – polluted – the language of the land’s unrighteousness is throughout the book of Jeremiah. The land itself had become a ruin. How could it be restored? If the promise relied on the people to make it come true, it would never get done. The faithful in Israel just needed the right leader – they were waiting for a new king to set right what another king had done wrong. Josiah was a relatively good king, but he died. And the Babylonians came anyway. Things just seemed to get worse.