Iron & Altar

"Can any of the false gods of the nations send rain? Can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, O LORD, our God, to whom we look? You alone have done all these things." - Jeremiah 14:22

Jeremiah has hit bottom. His people are dying - sword in the fields, famine in the city. The false prophets have been promising everything is fine. It is not fine. And his prayer, coming from that place, is stripped down to something honest: we have sinned. We know it. For your name's sake, don't give up on us.

And then the question at the end. He has watched everything else fail. The political alliances, the religious establishment, the comfortable assumptions. And he turns and asks: can any of the false gods send rain? No. Then you are the one I look to.

Every man builds his rain-sources. The career that was going to provide security. The way he manages his image and reputation. The thing he goes to when things get hard that is not God. Jeremiah's question is the one that comes after all of those have failed - and it can come as destruction, or it can come as a choice you make before the destruction arrives.

The righteous will shine like the sun. They will. That is where this is going for the man who stays wheat.

Brother, what have you been looking to for rain that has not delivered? Name it plainly - not a category but the specific thing. Then take Jeremiah's question as a statement and say it: you alone, Lord, are the one I look to. Tell one man this week what it is you have been looking to instead of God. He probably has his own version of it.

Lord, I have looked to sources that cannot send rain and I know it. For your name's sake, do not spurn me. You alone have done all these things. I am looking to you. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.