Seriously?

I'm going to cheat a bit and leak two verses into tomorrow's reading because it fits my theme. We read of the assassination of Gedaliah, the man appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to be over the people left behind in Judah. As is not unusual, when civil unrest occurs, people think of heading to greener pastures, and they asked Jeremiah to pray to God to see what his will was. They went as far as to state in Jeremiah 42:6:

Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the LORD our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the LORD our God.

We've heard similar words so many times prior that I've lost count. In short, the people promised to obey the Lord's word, which is subsequently given to Jeremiah, at which point the people state in Jeremiah 43:2:

Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are lying! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘You must not go to Egypt to settle there.’ 

So much for being willing to listen and obey God's word. Lucky for us, we listen AND obey everything the Lord tells us, without question and with no hesitation or trepidation on our parts. By this point, most of you should be able to recognize my sarcasm when I write it.

All this is a prelude to my primary point, a verse I was concerned that I was giving far too much weight. As a brief aside, this is a danger we can do with every part of the Bible--we can magnify certain verses, under-emphasize others and create our own little cafeteria of Biblical teaching, selecting what looks good and conveniently ignoring the rest. As easy as this is to do, we must always be on our guard and do the best we can to NOT take this approach to the Bible. Having said that, Lamentations 5:20 states:

Why do you always forget us?
   Why do you forsake us so long? 

Are you freakin' kidding me? Jeremiah is commonly credited as the author of this book, but is there any doubt in your mind why the Lord forgot the people of Israel (if indeed we accept that he did, which is debatable)? This is a people that had spent the prior 1,000 years doing almost the exact OPPOSITE of what the Lord had required of them--they worshiped idols, didn't do the proper sacrifices, intermarried with foreigners, had wicked leadership and looked everywhere EXCEPT to God for salvation. Those would be some pretty good reasons for why God "forgot" them. Jeremiah himself wrote in 4:22 (p968):

My people are fools;
   they do not know me.
They are senseless children;
   they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil;
   they know not how to do good.

I've always taken a perverse pleasure in this verse, simply because we're not discussing people who don't know what to do or just haven't been instructed, but people that are intentionally evil--they know what they're doing is wrong, AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY! And yet they wonder why they've been forgotten.

We will be tempted to think the same way from time to time in our lives. We will feel forsaken for any numbers of reasons, but we can take solace in the knowledge that God is never far from us. More often than not, that distance is a self-imposed one--God didn't exile the people out of spite, but out of love and in the hope they would wake up and return to the Lord. We have the same promise today, and when we have those moments when we feel alone or abandoned in the world, we would do well to remember this. 

Scott