Week 1 June 2025, Devotion Part 1

They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.  Jeremiah 8:11

Who are “they,” we ask, and are taken aback to learn they are prophets and priests, all “greedy for gain” and practicing deceit. They pretend to be wise, boasting of the LORD’s Law in their midst. “But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie”. This is the first mention in the Bible of “scribes” as a professional class. It helps to read verses 8-12 of chapter 8 for added context. Jeremiah categorizes the conduct of these presumptuous peace proponents as “abominable.”. His conclusion? They have no shame at all and “do not even know how to blush.”  The word “blatantly arrogant” would sum up my dismay more accurately.

It so happens that in Jeremiah 1:17 we read, “But you, gird up your loins; arise, and say to them everything that I command you. Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them.”  To secure his robe with a belt meant for him to go hit the road nimble-footed, to walk the God talk as directed by the Spirit. To that end Jeremiah had been chosen while still in his mother’s womb. Self-conscious of his youth, God assured the fledgling prophet that He would put His words of truth onto both his professing lips and poetic pen. In fact, the use of puns and wordplay can already be glimpsed in Jeremiah 1:11-12, “And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see a rod of almonds.’ Then the LORD said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.’” In Hebrew the word for almond tree is “shaqed,” and “shoqed” for watching.  Never mind if it does not sound “playful” to our modern ear, as long as we take this seriously: God vows to “perform His Word.”  Isaiah 55:11 sheds the more helpful light on this, “So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”  Part 1 of 2

Comment: Let’s lighten things up a bit, before bracing for “shock and awe.”   Aliens have left their spaceship, and a few skulls and bones are seen lying around. The caption reads, “Greetings from planet IKEA – we come in pieces.”  Ages ago, the Hollywood Bowl crowd roared when Bob Hope quipped, “The Russians are all for peace – a piece of Poland, for Estonia….”  I recoil when I recall Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the “abominable” Oval Office meeting that shamefully vilified President Zelenskyy.  Prospects of peace are still dangled before his nation’s people, many traumatized by the continuous death and destruction visited on them.  So, just let the Russians have all  of Crimea and some other profitable pieces of Ukraine, and the world will inundate the powers that be with effusive praise.  Really?  What happened in ancient Israel won’t stay there, regardless of smug Las Vegas-type claims.  God will perform His judgment on our nation also. Will it be by divine retribution or the astonishing result of Christ’s Resurrection?