Seems
to me, there’s not a man on earth like Jeremiah. Not then, not now, not ever.
Of course the same could be said of every single one of us. We are all uniquely
designed by our creator for His purposes—“just like everybody else.” Most of
the time I am content just being myself. But there are occasions when I come
across someone who is near-perfect. Then I wish I’d been cloned.
That
how I feel about Jeremiah. First, he was a writer par-excellence, with words still
in print after hundreds of years. He was a captivating speaker. When he spoke,
he uttered only the words put in his mouth by the Holy Spirit. And he was
totally uninhibited as he brought out his visual aids and donned costumes to
make a point. He was also unashamed of emotion, (A man with feelings…now that’s
an anomaly! But also a characteristic that makes his appealing, at least to a
woman like me. I like the fact the he just didn’t seem to care what others
thought, so he wept openly, often, without apology. His tears did not come from
self-pity but out of concern for other people. Even when he was misunderstood,
rejected, thrown into a pit, and put in jail, he kept right on serving God and caring
for others. I admire him for his tenacity.
This
list of Jeremiah’s qualities might tempt the most competent woman to envy. But
that’s only part of the story. He was also “real”—sometimes weak, often tired,
suffered bouts of depression, and was susceptible to a very common human flaw. Fear! When God commissioned him, first
thing he did was offer an excuse laced with fear. “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I do
not know how to speak; I am only a child.” The words contradict themselves
in that short sentence. For how can a person acknowledge the Lord as
“sovereign” and then say “I cannot?” Doesn’t sovereign mean having all power, all authority? Doesn’t God’s sovereignty include providing for
those He has called? With infinite patience God answered him, “Do not be afraid.”
And with the imperative came a promise: “I am with you and will rescue you.”
The
promise still stands and includes every fear-filled person from that day to
this. “’I know the plans that I have for you,”
Jeremiah wrote later, “plans to prosper you
and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Today as we
respond to God’s call we may experience our own pangs of fear and doubt. We may
offer excuses like Jeremiah’s or come up with some of our own. But whatever the
excuse, whatever fear we face, God comes to us as he did to him dispensing
large doses of truth and love. If we believe Him, we will grow in faith like
Jeremiah did as he walked in step with God one day at a time for more than
forty years.
This acrostic that I spotted on
Facebook may help us overcome our fear and carry on.
F- E-A-R has two meanings:
Forget Everything And Run or
Face Everything And Rise.
The choice is yours.
