At the beginning of this year, I decided I wanted to read 1Samuel again. Once I got started in that book I just kept reading. I read through both Samuels, both Kings, both Chronicles and then kept going through the post-exile and poetry books, right up through the Major Prophets.
This morning I find myself trying to decide if I want to keep reading through the Minor Prophets until I get to the Gospels, or do I want to skip straight to the Good News. I feel like those Major Prophets have done me in! So much doom and gloom! I am crying out for Good News! And that may be exactly what they are meant to do! They make us thirsty for the Good News of our Savior, Christ Jesus.
One verse from Jeremiah has been circling through my mind – it is the verse that highlights two sins. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” [Jeremiah 2:13 NIV]
Two sins. The first was forsaking God – “the spring of living water,” and the second was thinking they could do it without God – digging their “own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
That is a danger for all of us – to think we can do life without God. If we attempt to do so, we will find ourselves dry and thirsty. I know I need to revisit the “spring of living water” every day – sometimes every moment! Amen&Amen