"Oh that I had in the desert a wayfarers' lodging place; that I might leave my people and go from them! Jeremiah 9.2
The anguish of it all. The tearful prophet, though not in tears.
Is Jeremiah the prophet without hope? His voice carries with it the weight of creation and chaos. Is that him choking on his tears or his deconstructive prayers? Jeremiah wanted to be a man of few words but the poet (Spirit) inside him wouldn't allow him to remain silent. So he spoke and the cookie crumbled. At times he hated himself, despised the day that he was born. Sometimes I wonder if Jeremiah's life was just an endless Monday.
Enter the desert. A place of solitude and therefore solace. To Jeremiah this was fantasy island. He's not asking for much, just a little cottage. Someplace out of the way from it all. "All" is of course the problem. If there were no "all" then he would have never opened his mouth (which was always bigger than he anticipated). The "cottage" is not temptation but meditation. It is poetry in pain; sacred lament. A reconfiguration of the soul on pilgrimage to a city whose builder and maker is God. The prophet is no fool. Weak, yes, but foolish, no. He is weak in that he would never go or speak for that matter were there not someone terrifying breathing down his back. Foolish, no; in that he realizes that his desert is his passion. The poet finds peace in the midst of chaos. There is an eye of the storm.
Enter the land. A parcel of property. In the midst of chaos and deconstruction God told Jeremiah to buy land. Go buy a thousand shares of Enron at $60 a pop and watch it crash to 60 cents. There is hope in absurdity, the unimaginable. Here the prophet practices in effect what he preaches. That is he preaches chaos in the hopes of recreation. Exteriorally he is a pragmatist but interiorally he is an optimist. He believes there is a sorrow that leads to repentance. And so his tears are sown in the land of his forefathers in anticipation that the land will live again. This is a mysterious God worth believing in. The God who dares to make dry bones live. Sola Fide, WHB
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That was deep, and exactly what I needed to hear. I could explain, but it would take a little while. God is indefinitely mysterious, and his ways are surely not our ways. But in the midst of it all Jeremiah still had an optimistic view, something that I sometimes do not give God the benefit of the doubt. How unpassionate is that, when anyone just moves on in life, without allowing the mystery of God to take place. Waiting is not always a wonderful experience, but who knows maybe those dry bones in my life will live...
~The Chad
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