Lent
March 15, 2021
Scripture Reading:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
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.
Our relationship with God is ongoing, building toward God’s vision of a world ruled by love. God created us to engage actively in improving and growing in wisdom and truth. I was present at the initiations of computers in the workforce. At the agency where I worked, we first started creating digital records by having all our county offices send the hardcopy of everything we did to the state office. Centralized staff inputted the data into a huge computer. Soon we had computers in every county. Eventually, every worker had a computer on their desks and directly entered information. Now clientele can initiate applications directly from a website. Our covenants with God also echoed the progress in our world.
Jeremiah describes a new covenant that requires people to take more responsibility for their actions and results. Our relationship with God remained solid and necessary, but God graced us with the gift of not just following external rules but seeking righteousness in everything we do by planting God’s laws in our hearts. Empowering all God’s people to seek righteousness enables all people to be one with God more quickly.
Just as the Israelites were not always successful in obeying God’s laws, we, today, at times substitute self-righteousness for God’s righteousness, our view of justice for God’s justice. Being responsible for spreading the love of God to all people requires each of us to maintain close connections with God in prayer and meditation, in study, and in interacting with others to see and hear them more clearly. God is described as seeing what is in our hearts. We need to work at understanding others from their perspective as we strive toward oneness.
Prayer: God, expand our empathy so that we can learn how to love your love with all your creation. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.