Christmastide

December 31, 2019

Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-10

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.’ –Jeremiah 1:9-10

I may have written about this before so please forgive me if I repeat myself. My parents sold the farm when my Dad’s health would not allow him to do the hard labor required to maintain it. They bought a nice, neat well-kept small house in nearby Stillwater and moved to town. My Dad had never lived in a city and having neighbors on all sides of him gave him a bit of claustrophobia, I think. I always found this surprising because he was a natural people person. He was soon on the look out for a place with open space and he found it. At the edge of town with a creek on its south side and no neighbors on the west, a couple of acres of land with a small house, and a separate workshop. It was awful. Overground so badly with weeds and trees it was nearly impossible to walk across the yard. The house itself had become the stopover place for transients and someone had helped themselves to all the copper and anything else in the house that was readily removeable and of some worth. I do not remember the exact time of the year they bought it. They did not move to it for several months. The first thing they did was remove the unwanted trees and trash and then Dad mowed the entire lot to the shortest of grass where any grass existed. Then winter came and they switched their rebuilding to the house.  I do think Dad found new energy in the work.

Spring arrived and my Mother who was an avid gardener carefully identified every plant in the yard, nurtured them, and removed any weeds that were encroaching on their ground. She also cleared the earth and planted a huge vegetable garden. They did all this before they moved and since I visited at the previous house, I had not seen the place since that first shocking experience. The first time I went to see them after they moved, I was even more shocked. A curving driveway from the street up to the attached garage was lined with the most beautiful array of irises and daffodils. A well-groomed lawn spilled down the hill on the other side of the flowers. It was an unbelievable and amazing transformation.

Jeremiah was instructed by God to do whatever was necessary to restore Israel to wholeness and health using metaphors of restore something like my parents experienced in their work on the new home. God was indicating that for Israel to get right with God it had to clean up our act before it would flourish, and they would be the people God had called them to be. The promise was tat the work was worth doing. I believe Jeremiah’s message speaks truth to us today.  At the close of not only an old year but at the end of a decade, let us each take stock of our lives and initiate the replenishing of our souls. Spring is just a few months away.

Prayer: Lord, help us to see past the clutter that hides the possibilities all about us. Grant us the strength and courage to build and plant faith, hope, and love throughout our world. 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.