Parched....

Jeremiah 2:9-19 "Therefore I bring charges against you again,"
declares the Lord.
"And I will bring charges against your children's children.
[10] Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look,
send to Kedar and observe closely;
see if there has ever been anything like this:
[11] Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their Glory
for worthless idols.
[12] Be appalled at this, O heavens,
and shudder with great horror,"
declares the Lord.
[13] "My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
[14] Is Israel a servant, a slave by birth?
Why then has he become plunder?
[15] Lions have roared;
they have growled at him.
They have laid waste his land;
his towns are burned and deserted.
[16] Also, the men of Memphis and Tahpanhes
have shaved the crown of your head.
[17] Have you not brought this on yourselves
by forsaking the Lord your God
when he led you in the way?
[18] Now why go to Egypt
to drink water from the Shihor?
And why go to Assyria
to drink water from the River?
[19] Your wickedness will punish you;
your backsliding will rebuke you.
Consider then and realise
how evil and bitter it is for you
when you forsake the Lord your God
and have no awe of me,"
declares the Lord,
the Lord Almighty.

In a dry and hot country images of water and thirst are powerful. God declares that he is the spring of living water. This is an image of movement and of replenishment. Moving water is not stagnant, it doesn’t contain death of any sort, it is not foul or polluted, but fresh and reviving. In God we find our souls can be revived, and spending time with him we find that we learn and grow to be like him and that we start to act with goodness.

But sometimes we can abandon our pursuit of God. Sometimes we try to fid refreshment in other things. God likens this to us building our own water containers, cisterns, giant holes in the ground. But they are broken and leak. All that we are left with is emptiness and dryness.

In Jeremiah’s time the empty cisterns probably referred to the plans of Judah’s rulers who wanted to ensure a political survival of their nation apart from God’s will, a will that Jeremiah was revealing to them. But for us it can mean any plan that we have that stands apart from or in rebellion to God’s will. I’d rather drink from living water than find myself scrabbling around in parched ground….