Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Cracked Pot Decisions


Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Listen to the word of the Lord, people of Jacob—all you families of Israel!  This is what the Lord says:  “What did your ancestors find wrong with me  that led them to stray so far from me?  They worshiped worthless idols, only to become worthless themselves…. “Go west and look in the land of Cyprus; go east and search through the land of Kedar.  Has anyone ever heard of anything as strange as this?  Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all?  Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!  The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay,” says the Lord.  “For my people have done two evil things:  They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water.  And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!    Jeremiah 2:4-5, 10-13

The term “crackpot” may have outlived its usefulness.  It was a great debating vilification of the other side’s position some centuries ago when pottery was in daily use in the average household.  Everyone then knew a cracked pot wouldn’t do what it was created to do…hold milk, wine, or water.  So a crackpot idea was one that wouldn’t hold anything valuable, thereby making it a worthless position.  Jeremiah’s whole point about Israel’s cracked pot decision-making was that they’d made worthless decisions about their God and had, accordingly, become worthless cracked pots themselves.  The scathing rebuke for Israel is that, in the same way you get up covered in fleas if you lie down with the yard dogs, you also become whatever you worship.  They had exchanged the glory of Almighty God for the worthlessness of carved idols of stone; they’d gone from riches to rags.
It’s not an easy ride reading the words of a prophet like Jeremiah.  Day after day his finger points loudly at our decisions gone wrong.  What is so annoying about Jeremiah is that he is simply right; the choices didn’t have to go so wrong had the leaders and followers simply chosen to use the unfailing vessel of Godliness, rather than the cracked pot of selfishness.  They had accepted God’s gracious covenant, only to then (strangely enough) return to idols and superstition.  It was like the sign-then-drive events at car dealerships; they signed the deal, rode away in the convertible, forgot about their part in the bargain, and were never heard from again.  When the car of their cracked pot theology began to break down, they’d come back to the altar and point to the covenant terms as if God were the one breaking the deal.  Jeremiah called that strange; indeed!
Whether or not our country was founded intentionally as a Christian nation, or not, is a debate I’m not willing to explore today.  However, it is hardly debatable that we are anything but that today.  From the pornography on TV screens and theatres, to price-gouging in a Covid-19 crisis, and the selfish posturing of politicians, and justifying sexually-perverted alternative lifestyles, we can proclaim Christianity as a national profile until blue in the face from holding our breath against the stench of sin…we, as a nation, have abandoned whatever humility we may once have owned toward the God of grace and glory – and we have done it in favor of the idols of self-gratification, money, power, and prestige.
In answer to Jeremiah’s question

Has anyone ever heard of anything as strange as this?  Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? 

Yup!

For You Today
Perhaps it’s time to stop holding everyone else accountable and begin-again the true Christian practice of looking within; we might start asking God to judge us and set us straight.  Then, at least in Heaven, we might have a shot at not being such a nation of cracked pots.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For another post on this topic see Hope - Part 1

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