Thursday, July 21, 2016

Jeremiah 2: 1-3, 7-8, 12-13

This word of the LORD came to me:
Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear!

I remember the devotion of your youth,
how you loved me as a bride,
Following me in the desert,
in a land unsown.
Sacred to the LORD was Israel,
the first fruits of his harvest;
Should any presume to partake of them,
evil would befall them, says the LORD.

When I brought you into the garden land
to eat its goodly fruits,
You entered and defiled my land,
you made my heritage loathsome.
The priests asked not,
“Where is the LORD?”
Those who dealt with the law knew me not:
the shepherds rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
and went after useless idols.

Be amazed at this, O heavens,
and shudder with sheer horror, says the LORD.
Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water.

Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it. Israel is God’s chosen people and on them he poured out his blessing and grace. The people responded as a bride to her husband. God was revered, feared, and held in the most sacred regard.

Then, when things got good the people forgot God and turned from Godly things. When God rained down blessing Israel held up the fruits of that blessing and said, “Look what our hands have made.” They started worshipping gods of their own making.

God also shed his blessing and grace upon the land known as America. He bestowed all the goodness and bounty this country has. We were a Godly people who knew and revered God. There was nothing we could not accomplish. We sent people to the deepest parts of the earth and to the moon above. We cured disease that claimed the lives of so many and we ended the tyrannies of evil men.

But, like Israel before us, we took the blessings God provided and said, “Look what OUR hands have done.” We drifted away from God and created for ourselves our own gods out of selfish desire. We now worship money, power, pleasure, and our own disordered desires.

Shudder with sheer horror. We have done two evils in the sight of God. We have forsaken him. God is dead; we no longer have need for him. We have replaced him with science. We have become the creator but our creations have no real life.

Woe to this world when God stops providing and leaves us to wallow in our foolishness.