I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

     Jeremiah tells us that when God called him, his response was that he was too young. God told him not to say that he was too young because God was sending him. God said that he must go wherever He sent him. When God sends us, we must go. There is no, “I am too young,” “I am too old,” “I am too…”. God knows who and what we are when He calls us. Chances are good that whatever it is we think disqualifies us from going where God is sending us, speaking what God is telling us to say, is why God chose us in the first place. God told Jeremiah, “I have put my words in your mouth.” This is very similar to what Jesus told His disciples when He sent them out to preach. He told them not to worry about what they would say because the Spirit would speak through them. I pray that I will have the faith to allow God’s Spirit to speak through my mouth.
     The first prophecy which God gives Jeremiah is to confront the people with their choice to turn from Him to things which cannot do what He can do. One of the metaphors used struck me as very telling. He said that the people turned away from a fountain of living water and instead dug their own cistern, one with cracked walls that cannot hold water. There are two aspects to this metaphor. The first is that turning from God to something else is like turning from a fresh mountain spring to a cistern. I have drunk water from a mountain spring. The taste is wonderful and refreshing. I have also tasted water from a cistern. The taste is stale and somewhat muddy (that’s not quite the right way to describe it, but I am not sure how else to do so). But in this case, these people have turned from a fresh mountain spring, not just to a cistern, but to one that won’t hold water. So, the question is, what cracked cistern am I tempted to turn to rather than getting refreshing water from the living fountain which is God?

     The first thing I saw in this passage was the importance of putting aside our personal feuds in order to serve the Lord. As important as that is helping our fellow believers to resolve their conflicts. We must not let personal animosity divide us, nor let it interfere with doing the Lord’s work.
     Paul tells us how to avoid getting into feuds with our fellow believers. If we spend our time rejoicing in the Lord, we will not have time to be fighting with one another. And how do we manage to rejoice in the Lord all the time? By not worrying about anything. How do we keep from worrying? By praying in every situation we find ourselves in. In particular, by going to God with humility and thanksgiving with petitions and requests for everything that happens in or lives. If we do this, we will find our hearts and minds filled with God’s peace, a peace and calmness which will baffle everyone we meet.
     Then Paul comes at it from a different direction and tells us that we should limit ourselves to thinking about only certain classes of things. Here is the list of things we should limit our thoughts to: whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable (and here he even defines what is admirable by telling us that it is things which are excellent or praiseworthy). Those are the things which we should think about. If we limit ourselves to thinking about only about these aspects of our fellow believers, we will find that we do not have anything to fight about.

     I will thank God because He is always near at hand. I will praise His name for all He has done. I will warn the proud not to boast of their accomplishments. Those accomplishments are a gift from God. I will warn the wicked not to defy God, because their success is according to His will and when the time is right He will judge them for their actions. The wicked will not be able to escape the consequences of their actions indefinitely. The time will come when they will be forced to experience the full weight of God’s displeasure.
     I will proclaim God’s wondrous power and the great things He has done for me.

     This proverb warns us against epicaricacy (the actual English word for schadenfreude). It is wrong to take pleasure in other’s misfortune, even when they have done us wrong in the past. To some degree, epicaricacy is a form of envy. We feel pleasure in other’s misfortune because we envy them. We should not envy the wicked because they will face God’s judgment (and we should not envy the righteous because they are using their good fortune to help others).