Thoughts on Jeremiah 13

Today's reading: Jeremiah 13; Matthew 18

Reading Jeremiah 13 this morning, I couldn't help but wonder how close to God most Christians really want to be.

The chapter opens with a passage I've always thought was a little weird where God has Jeremiah buy a linen loin cloth, wear it for a bit, hide it under a rock, and then go retrieve it after it has completely spoiled. As weird as it seems at first blush, God’s point with it is pretty profound. He says that He created Israel to cling as closely to Him as a loincloth clings to a man, and that if they did, they would be a people to His glory, but since they did not cling to Him, they have been spoiled.

Thinking back to what we read earlier in our reading plan, as Israel came through the wilderness, or when we read about Israel under David and Solomon, where they were holding close to the Lord, this is exactly what happened. When Israel was clinging tightly to the Lord, they were safe from their enemies, their farms produced abundantly, the rains came in their seasons, they were financially rich, etc., but the further they drifted from Him, the more poorly things went for them in all these ways.

This metaphor got me thinking about how we, today, cling to the Lord (or don’t). To put it as bluntly as God did to Jeremiah, do we want to be as close to God as our underwear is to us? Do we want to be the closest thing to Him that is never far from Him? Or, in this metaphor, are we more interested in being something like a hat or a jacket that is maybe close to God sometimes, but other times is left alone to do our own thing? This is maybe a weird way to think about this, but you never take your underwear off when you get where you’re going, but you don’t always wear your jacket or your hat at all, and even when you do, you may very well take it off and leave it on a chair when you get where you’re going. This is more the pattern I tend to see from Christians in America. We want to be close to the Lord sometimes, like when we’re struggling, or when we need something, or on Sunday mornings, but then we would prefer to be hung on the back of the chair the rest of the time to do our own thing apart from Him.

This is not how God designed life to work. God does not call us to cling to Him on occasion, or live in His ways from time to time, but to cling to Him always, walking day by day as His children, conformed more and more to the image of Christ every day. So many Christians live most of the time as though God was not there at all, and then wonder why they never experience the joy or closeness with the Lord that others seem to experience. But when we cling consistently to Him, even as imperfectly as we do, that is where we can begin to experience the real joy of the Christian life that God is offering us.