Years ago, I had a cartoon that showed a heron trying to swallow a frog. This wasn’t successful: the frog was choking the heron with his front feet. The caption read, NEVER GIVE UP! Right. I confess that there seem to be times when I’ve done all I can, yet nothing has changed for the better. Scriptures to be heard this weekend are for others like me who are just tired of trying to “do good” and change the world.
JEREMIAH (31:27-34) continues to give comfort to the Exiles now living in Babylon: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord….so I will watch over them to build and to plant…” The People of Israel appeared to be incapable of Righteousness, so YHWH is taking the initiative to establish a NEW covenant, the Way of God to be within them. So God hasn’t abandoned us after all! Are there those on the doorstep of giving up on redemption, saying “God can never love ME”? Yet God keeps on initiating a relationship with those exiles in a Strange Land.
II TIMOTHY 3:14-4:5 is an exhortation from experience to all of us who are timid. “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed.” OF COURSE it’s tough to Do Good–but hang in there! Despite our tiredness, the Lord is still with us. There will be those with “itching ears” who will seek out popular doctrines of success and worldly gain. Scriptures–both sacred and civil–are full of stories of people who’ve wandered away but returned.
LUKE 18:1-8 is Jesus’ story of the judge who “feared neither man nor God” and the widow who kept pestering her by pleading her cause. Afraid that she’d come and slap her in the face (a big insult in those days), she declared in the widow’s favor. Warning–this is a story, not an allegory of God! It’s told to encourage the disciple to be persistent in prayer and to expect a favorable result in God’s Good Time. To Luke, persistence in prayer and focus on the righteousness of God are matters of faith: if we believe, then we’ll keep on praying.
John M. Buchanan, lately of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY, reminds us in FEASTING on the WORD (C 4:193), “Count on God to come down on the side of justice. Count on God to hear the ones who have no power, no influence, no voice. Count on God to hear those who have nowhere else to turn. Count on God not always to grant your requests, but to hear, with loving, parental patience, the persistent prayers of your heart.”
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Join me every Tuesday to be encouraged and confronted by texts to be read on the upcoming weekend–at horacebrownking.com
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