Choosing Blindfolds and Earplugs, Jeremiah 5:20-31

How great could life be? 

Have you ever played “If Only”?  It is a game of regrets, such as, “If only I had studied more…” or “If only I hadn’t wasted so much time…” or “If only I had said…” or maybe an “If only I hadn’t…” or three might make our list as well.  Each of us has our own If Only list.  What’s on yours?

God’s people in the Old Testament must have written themselves quite a list!  In our text, God says (abridged for space), “Hear this now, O foolish people…who have eyes and see not and who have ears and hear not…this people has a defiant and rebellious heart…they do not say in their heart, ‘Let us now fear the Lord our God…’ your sins have withheld good things from you.”

How great could their lives have been had they not chosen blindfolds and earplugs?  They departed from God by covering their eyes and not seeing the many rich though sometimes routine daily blessings of God in their lives and demonstrated in Creation.  They stopped up their ears to shut out His words of guidance, instruction, love, and warning, shutting out his the effects of His Word in their lives...or so they must have thought.

See, just as obedience begets God’s blessings, disobedience engenders its own consequences.  It doesn’t really matter whether we believe it or not.  In their case, they would not get to enjoy some of the good things that God had in store for them (v. 25).   Not only didn’t they get them but they didn’t even know what they were missing, how greatly their lives could have been further enriched.  Ignorance, alas, is not always bliss.

Not content to suffer the consequences of their own sin, but they exulted in the sin of others.  At the end of the chapter, God says, “The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so.”   

New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle won a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was recognized early as a player whose potential was essentially limitless though his career was hindered by bad knees.  NY manager Casey Stengel said, “I never saw a player who had greater promise.”    In a pre-steroid era, the 5’11” 195-pound outfielder hammered 536 home runs over his 18-year career, some over 500 feet.  However, his penchant for alcohol would help to shorten his brilliant career and his life. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/memories/1995/95pass6.htm)

Near the end of his life, Mantle, whose father, uncles, and a son died at earlier ages than he, said, “If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.”  If only.  The popular baseball idol, upon assessing his life choices, advised his admirers, “Don’t be like me.”  For his funeral, Mantle requested that Roy Clark sing his poignant 1969 hit, “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”  With lyrics packed full of regrets, this song is certainly the national anthem for the game of If Only. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY4LxORCeo)

While it is a game that can certainly dominate a person, the way to win at If Only is to reach the end of life having collected as few regrets as possible.  Fear God and eschew evil.  Influence others to do the same.  Strip yourself of blindfolds and bask in the goodness of God, praising Him for each blessing great and small.  Put away the earplugs that block His voice from teaching you.

Only then will you know how great your life can truly be!

2 x 2 = 1, Jeremiah 3:25

As my friend and former coworker Stacie used to remind me from time to time, “I wasn’t exactly president of the math club.” Frankly, neither was I. The good news about relationships is this—you don’t have to be. You only have to remember one equation to restore and maintain them: 2x2=1.

I never cease to marvel at the Israelites. They walk with God and prosper, then they go off to do their own thing and suffer. They lose wars, they suffer famine, they are taken captive, and after a period of time—I don’t mean hours or days, I mean years and decades—they finally figure it out and get their hearts right with God and abandon the idolatry and other sins and reestablish God to His rightful place in their individual and collective lives…but that is not the end.

The pattern recurs throughout the historical narrative of the Old Testament of the Bible. They walk with God and prosper; they turn away from Him and suffer. Second verse, same as the first. Walk with God and enjoy His blessings; abandon Him in exchange for the false gods of the cultures surrounding them. Instead of addressing the cultures and introducing them to Jehovah God, they often adapted to those cultures and collected their ungodly habits and practices.

But that is not the point of this piece. Perhaps another time. In fact, I am pretty sure of it.

The pendulumic swings of the Israelites in relationship to God are not altogether foreign to us. We often experience the same kind of near-and-far in our relationship with Him. After all, we’re only human.

Whenever the Jews did return and right their spiritual ship, there were two elements that were necessary to ignite the process of relationship restoration. Jeremiah 3:25 says,

“We lie down in our shame, and our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers. From our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

Here we read of their humility (personal recognition of their offenses and their wrongness) and confession (specifically identifying their shortcoming to the one offended). These two elements are necessary to make forgiveness and restoration possible.

God being God, He is in any relationship the Constant that never changes, never errs. When two imperfect people are in conflict, restoration requires these same two elements on the part of both parties every time the relationship is broken.

Few are the conflicts I have ever witnessed in which one party was completely at fault and the other was wholly holy. It almost never happens. Even if it begins that way, often it can be that the initially innocent party reacts wrongly and that sends the relationship spiraling further downward. Mr. I-Didn’t-Do-Anything-Wrong and Mr. I-Won’t-Forgive are doomed to defeat.

However, if two parties in a conflict implement these two actions—understanding that their behavior or attitude was wrong and confessing their specific offenses to one another, enabling mutual forgiveness to take place—they will find that their relationship can again experience unity. Two times two will equal one.