Journal Entry
Wednesday is the day I do Morning Prayer as a reading circle and we do the 7-week psalm cycle rather than the 30-day one. So I will choose two verses from Jeremiah. I read it last night with a different reading circle.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked; be utterly desolate, says the Lord,
for my people have have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns that can hold no Water.
The image is striking. Who in their right mind would choose a broken cistern instead of an artesian well?
And yet, Jeremiah says in Chapter 2 that this is exactly what the people are doing. They are depending on their own resources instead of reaching out to God.
I wonder how often I do that? Probably every day.
Forsake doesn't just mean ignore. It can also mean renounce or reject. So it's not a forgetting that Jeremiah is pointing to, but an active abandoning.And for what?
Something of my own devising that is ineffective at best and useless now that it cannot hold any water at all.
I need to stick with this metaphor just a little longer. The living fountain is fresh clean water while rain water stored in a cistern can become stale and unhealthy. And even worse, evaporate or disappear through a hole into the ground.
Running through this whole section of Jeremiah is God's soliloquy about the disolution of the relationship between God and the people. The people haven't trusted and depended on God for everything, even for their basic need for water.
Of course, Jeremiah is a prophet and his metaphor is extreme. But how often do I go it alone and do not turn to God?
I have been thinking about this in relation to prayer as a whole. I say many of the prescribed prayers every day. Are they effective? Are they doing any good at all?
- Is there justice?
- Is there peace?
And then I think: If no one prayed for these things would we have any justice or peace at all?
I'm just raising this point about the cistern to remind myself that God is the source and I can never replace this source with something of my own making.