Week 27 Jeremiah
During the long siege of Jerusalem the Lord told Jeremiah to buy some land in his home town of Anathoth. It didn’t seem like a wise investment choice because Nebuchadnezzar would soon own that land.
So after the deed was signed and sealed Jeremiah prayed: O Sovereign Lord! You have made the heavens and the earth by your great power. Nothing is too hard for you!
It’s a pretty emphatic comment. Nothing is too hard for you! Nothing takes in pretty much everything.
But then Jeremiah’s prayer ended with an and-yet. You’re the greatest and most powerful and you can do anything: and yet, O Sovereign Lord, you have told me to buy the field – paying good money for it before these witnesses – even though the city will soon belong to the Babylonians.
Jeremiah knew for sure that the Lord was way past the borders of any known limitation – he was a permanent resident of nothing-too-hard country, a spirit of hyper-potent and insuperable capacity.
And yet Jeremiah was concerned about his property.
It’s like I win the lottery and I’m distressed about my broken gate-latch.
Normally you’d think that being totally personally certain about one big thing that by definition took care of everything else would – in a natural, seamless kind of way – carry-over and guarantee total personal certainty about other small things.
But Jeremiah was concerned about his gate-latch.
Note: quotes from Jeremiah 32:17, 25 (NLT version)