Daily Office Readings for Saturday of the 5th Week in Lent: Year 1
Morning Psalms 137:1 to 6, and 144; Evening Psalms 42 and 43;
Jeremiah 31:27 to 34; Romans 11:25 to 36; John 11:28 to 44 or 12:37 to 50:
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 34: 31 to 34)
This is my favorite Jeremiah prophecy. As a Christian, I believe Jeremiah was foretelling the coming of our Lord Jesus when he says, the days are surely coming, says the Lord.” …”That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel”… he goes on, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” With this being prophesied, we are informed that God, acting in our Lord Jesus will make for all humanity, an unbreakable covenant. Given that we have a habit of breaking every covenant God has made with us, our Lord Jesus will be a living covenant. Being fully God and fully human, it is the way we, with God as one of us, (Emanuel), can keep covenant. But we even tried to break this covenant by killing him. But then God did something quite unexpected, God raised the covenant from the dead! This living Covenant can never be broken. We are locked into God forever.
And here is the thing, through our Lord Jesus, God has written the law of love and the fact that God exist, on our hearts, all human hearts. We no longer have to ask about God. We all know that God is, that God is Good, and that God loves us and lifts us up as humanity above all creation. This makes my job as a Christian preacher a little less difficult. All I have to really say is that God has already written the love of God on your heart, go and ponder what this means.
We humans have so many things on our minds. Among the many and manifold thoughts and ideas lives the presence of God. No matter who you are, there is a place within you where God is present. Take time during your Sabbath today to ponder about how God is present in you. Thank you Jeremiah, and thank you Lord Jesus.
Let us live to love, more than we just love to live, listening to what the Spirit is saying to, and through, the saints of God, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
onewhoponders 