Jeremiah 8:21-22 Common English Bible 21 Because my people are crushed, I am crushed; darkness and despair overwhelm me. 22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then have my people not been restored to health? Crushed We don’t usually image God as crushed but rather as uncrushable. And yet Jeremiah gives us a startling new picture of a God consumed with darkness and despair. Surely God spends much of the time crushed and downhearted over the actions of God’s peoples. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we don’t make it easy for God. We sit back while children die by the thousands every day of hunger. We continue to text each other on our cell phones in apparent disregard for the genocide occurring in various corners of the globe. It seems we have become experts at crushing God. We speak of God being all-powerful, all-knowing and ever-present but never as crushed and weeping in sorrow. Somehow we cannot bring ourselves to conjure up a vision of God who is beaten down with despair over the actions of God’s children. Jeremiah could. Maybe it is time for us to draw a different picture of God. Most of us understand God as a God of love and grace so why is it so difficult for us to allow God to express the sadness that engulfs much of the world. If we did then we would also become filled with the darkness and despair around us. Maybe that is not such a bad thing but a necessary move toward the reality of life. This is not to say there is no hope. There is. The hope becomes reality when we are able to be as honest about the world we live in as God is. Prayer: Grieving God, who cries with those who are suffering; who bears the wounds of those who are reaching out for comfort; and who takes the ills of the world upon God’s self. Let us comfort you, O God, by becoming physicians of the hurts of the world; by helping you in restoring the Balm of Gilead. Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 09:45:53 +0000
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