We have noted that Jeremiah reckoned with the fact that God was present and active in the trauma he witnessed. He does not speak of the darkness brought upon him by the Babylonians. However, and however long it takes Jeremiah to come to grips with his stress, this has to be taken into account.
In Jeremiah’s case, he had prophesied the coming judgment of God. He had witnessed the refusal of the people of Judah to repent as God called them to do. We believe there is a principle in Scripture by which we can say that God is always at work in and through traumatic experiences. This would be true of those experiencing the trauma as well as those who are seeing the trauma. This is certainly the case for those who know Christ.
It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).
We have another principle of assumption. We assume that if God is working in our lives through a traumatic situation, He is not going to intentionally hide His purpose. If, through the New Covenant relationship we have with Him, whereby we learn to listen to Him in His word and speak and cry out to Him in prayer, in time we will benefit through the trauma.
Let us lay this aside for awhile as we continue to hear Jeremiah’s reasonings. In stanza #7 Jeremiah is still in the time of “wormwood and gall.” Yet he says: This I recall to my mind. Therefore I have hope. He is about to tell us something about his thought process. Let’s see if we can hear what he says.
· 3:22: The nation has not been totally decimated. There is some good news in the midst of the trauma. There is still life, still some who have survived the judgment. Even as Jeremiah recognized God’s hand in the trauma, he also sees God’s hand in the positives. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed. It could have been worse. And it is because of God’s mercy. You need to understand that this is not the “mercy” word, as in pity. The Hebrew chesed refers to God’s goodness. There were actually some good things that could be seen in the trial. This is not some attempt to trick the mind. There are things that are not as bad as they could be, and those things Jeremiah attributed to God’s lovingkindness (I think that’s the word to translate chesed on every occasion; it might include His pity, but also His kindness, goodness, forgiveness, provision and so forth)..
Before we conclude this post, please note what Jeremiah has done. He is dealing with the trauma in “truth.” If the trauma was affliction by the rod of His wrath (3:1), then the good things need to be seen as the LORD’s lovingkindnesses. Jeremiah thought like this because this is what he had come to believe about His God. God was always at work, in every event. Some things were hard, others were blessings. Jeremiah was coming to accept them all from God. In the words of Job, Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? (Job 2:10).
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