Hearth & Altar

Jeremiah is crying. Not quietly - he says his eyes stream with tears day and night without rest. His people are in real trouble: sword in the fields, famine in the city. And his prayer, in the middle of all that, is one of the most honest prayers in the Bible. He doesn't pretend things are fine. He doesn't ask God to prove it isn't his fault. He says: we know we have sinned. We recognize our guilt. For your name's sake, don't give up on us.

And then he asks a question that becomes an act of faith: can any false god send rain? Can anything else do what only you can do? No. Then you are the one we look to.

Jesus tells his disciples that at the end of everything, the righteous will shine like the sun. Not just the heroes - the ordinary faithful who lived their whole lives as wheat in a field full of weeds. They will shine.

Your family is wheat. On the hard days, when the field feels mostly weeds, remember that.

• For our family, that when we are brought low we would say Jeremiah's prayer: for your name's sake, do not give up on us, we pray to the Lord.
• For the children in our family, that they would grow up as wheat in whatever field they are planted, and shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in our family carrying grief right now - that God's compassion would come to them quickly, we pray to the Lord.
• For all those we love who are standing at the end of their rope, that the question of Jeremiah would be theirs: you alone are the one we look to, we pray to the Lord.

At dinner tonight: ask each person to name one thing that is hard right now - something in the family, the school, the neighborhood, the world. Don't try to fix it. Just name it. Then say Jeremiah's prayer together: "You alone, Lord, are the one we look to. Help us." Sometimes naming the hard thing and bringing it to God is enough for one night.

Jeremiah's prayer is not a prayer of someone who has it together. It is the prayer of someone who is overwhelmed and chooses God anyway. That is the model you are showing your children when you pray through the hard things rather than around them.