BROKENHEARTED

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How ruined we are! How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.’”

“Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament. Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares.”

“Say, ‘This is what the Lord declares: Dead bodies will lie like dung on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.’”

Jeremiah 9:17-22

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

If you have been following along with The Christian Walk blog and the devotions from the book of Jeremiah, you know that the Israelites of Judah and Jerusalem were in big trouble with God and it was all of their own doing.

God had commanded their ancestors generations before to not have any other gods before Him and never to worship anything or anyone except Him and that law had not been rescinded. And yet, the Israelites had chosen to worship Baal and other false gods and idols of other cultures embedded within their homeland. It had gotten so bad that the people of God had abandoned Him in their lives, stubbornly avoiding and ignoring His will and way to pursue sinfulness and wickedness.

Obviously, that is never going to be overlooked by God and so, incited by His people’s disrespect and disregard, He put actions in motion to lay their homeland to waste and then displace them into a foreign land to be oppressed by a foreign people for seventy years. They would learn soon enough that if you purposely and willfully turn away from God, He in turn will turn away from you.

So what was the mindset of the Israelites after they experienced God’s consequences?

It could be summed up in one word: brokenhearted.

We know because of the word of God as found in Jeremiah 9, words of deep lament and grieving as expressed by the people of God in the midst of terrible hardship through the punishment He sent:

This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How ruined we are! How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.’”

“Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament. Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares.”

“Say, ‘This is what the Lord declares: Dead bodies will lie like dung on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.’”  Jeremiah 9:17-22

The women of Judah and Jerusalem were reduced to tears, wailing in sorrow and agony over the ruin caused by the invading Babylonian forces. Further exasperating their sadness was the shame they felt knowing it was their sins against God that had brought on His penalties.

Their homes were left in shambles. They were going to be taken from their beloved Judah and Jerusalem to Babylon where they would live among foreigners. Not everyone was going to make it as many lost their lives in the invasion. Death had entered their fortified cities and even the teens and children were not spared.

It was enough to leave anyone brokenhearted.

But perhaps, that’s just what the Israelites needed. To be brokenhearted.

For something had to change when it came to the condition of their hearts, hearts that had turned away from God and toward sin. It could not be business as usual.

You see, sometimes in order for our hearts to be turned in the direction God wants them to turn, they first must be broken so He can enter in to mend and repair through the work of His Spirit.  

Indeed, God is the only answer when it comes to having a broken heart fixed and after the seventy year exile, God did heal and restore the hearts of His people who were more than ready to renew and patch up their relationship with Him. He would allow them to return to Judah and Jerusalem where they would not only rebuild their homes but their faith as well.

And this brings us to our lives today.

When God looks at your heart, does He see a heart that is fully devoted and dedicated to His will and ways? Or does He see a heart that abandons and ignores Him, a heart that is only focused on selfishly fulfilling its own desires?

If you are in the latter category, then stand by. For the Lord will not tolerate a heart that is not inclined toward Him and will send His judgment in a way that will break that heart until you turn back to Him and ask Him to enter back into your life to heal and restore your relationship with Him, an act that will always lead to a heart that will be on the mend.

God is the cure for the broken hearted. He always has been. We just need to turn to Him fully and trust Him as our Maker, Master, and Great Physician.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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