Devotional - 073109

Most of the insights were taking from Walter Brueggemann's commentary, "Exile and Homecoming"

23 Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 9:23-24 NASB


I finished graduate school almost three years ago. During that time my primary responsibility was learning. That’s a pretty sweet gig! I was truly blessed by the Lord through the support of my mother (and financial aid) to focus on my studies. Now that I have a career and a wife, I find myself worried about things that I never worried about. How will I take care of my wife? When are we going to have children? Are we going to buy a house or should we wait? How am I going to pay for the expenses of daily life now?

As a result, I see myself getting choked out by the cares of this world. I struggle between being wise, responsible, and prudent or having faith that the Lord will take care of everything and that He has me where He wants me to be. I don’t want to be a middle school teacher all of my life, but that’s where God has me at the moment, although it’s difficult to be content. I feel the pressure and responsibilities of everyday life. It’s a lot more difficult to get in the Word and have a consistent prayer life than when I was back in college. Sometimes I even wish that I majored in something more lucrative instead of Bible. I constantly daydream that I have trillions of dollars, and that I’m the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. I daydream of all the good I would do with that money.

Then the other day I ran across the verses above (Jeremiah 9:23-24). The two ways of life are articulated in contrasting triads. The first triad is the way of this world, the way of wisdom, might, and riches. These are the things about which the world boasts. Personal intelligence, health, and self-sufficiency are the new virtues that need to be pursued and quite frankly, are attractive.

Brueggemann points out the contrasting triad of “lovingkindness, justice and righteousness” reflects a wholly different orientation, congruent with the character of God who delights in these qualities and insists upon them. Therein lies the struggle for me. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want some type of worldly security? We’d like to know we have a job to go to so that we can pay our bills, right? Wouldn’t it be nice to completely pay off a house and have most of your income become disposable?

These things in and of themselves are not evil. It’s when they take priority over Yahweh that they lead to death and judgment. Jeremiah is contrasting the social values of this world and with the community of life found in Yahweh. "In critiquing the practice of Corinthian church, the apostle Paul also contrasts the wisdom and power of the world with the weakness and foolishness of the Cross. As with Jeremiah and Paul, the issues in our own time have not changed."

It truly comes down to trusting what the Lord has said to be true. Namely, that the Lord is good and the cost of pursuing Him over and above everything else is worth the eternal weight of glory that He promises. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle with this at times. I’ve often wondered why He leaves so much mystery in the ways he deals with us. But in the end, “It is better to trust a God whose mysteries we cannot understand when He has given us the grounds to trust Him when we do not understand than a God whose adequacies we cannot rely on or whose interest we cannot be sure of.”