Week 25 Jeremiah
The Lord is quoted in Jeremiah six. He’s speaking to people who’ve lost their way: stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you shall find rest for your souls.
Another version: stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
Another version: stop right where you are! Look for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls.
A couple of years ago I read an essay where a guy was quoted saying that: post-modernism is xenophobic to the past. Hmmm. I’m not sure how much fear contemporary people have of the past. Some I guess. Personally I think a more common feeling is to disregard it. Different? Check. Contemptible? Check. Inapplicable? Check. Irrelevant? Check.
But the Lord says I should look back. Back might feel foreign, but it’s a good way. There’s rest in back, something for my soul in back.
It isn’t an easy choice, no doubt about that. Which is too bad because what I decide about the ancient paths makes a pretty big difference.
Notes: quote from Jeremiah 6:16 NASB, NIV & NLT versions. Makoto Fujimura ‘Walking Backward Into the Future’ in refractions: a journey of faith, art, and culture (Navpress: Colorado Springs, 2009) 133, quotes Thomas Oden’s After Modernity…What? (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1990).