Round and Round and Up and Down We Go Again

Tomorrow I am speaking at St John's Church, and unlike other places I preach, they run from a liturgy and give me the scripture passage to preach on, rather than a theme or leaving the choice to me. This time my theme is a passage from Jeremiah.  It's not the one on the picture, but as I was preparing for the service, I read through Jeremiah, and it's really quite discouraging for about the first 29 chapters (There are some odd snippets of hope, but not a lot).

Two things caught my attention. First, is the constant reference to the idolatry of the people.  In this day and age, we probably think about idolatry as bowing down to funny statues, but it's really about putting something in the place of, or above God.   In today's society, we still have idols, they just look a little different; iPhones, Laptops, TVs, Hobbies to name but a few.    

In Jeremiah's day,  the problem was that God was there, but they turned to something else instead.  Sound familiar??  Today how many times do we get sick and rush straight to Google instead of to the Great Physician?

The other thing I was thinking about is how easy it would have been for Jeremiah to lose hope entirely; I think he comes close. In the bit I am preaching on (8:18-9:1) he is despairing again over the condition of the people and wants to weep and weep for them.  It all got me thinking about our own emotions.  It can be really easy to look around us, either at our own situations or at the world in general and really let life get us down.  We could even say that we idolize our emotions; that is, we put them in the place of God.  We rely on, trust in and lean on our own feelings when we should only give that position to Jesus. 

The truth is that our hearts our deceitful.  Our 'hearts' in the scripture there (Jeremiah 17:9) refer to our mind, will, feelings and emotions.   They are fraudulent, or crooked. Our emotions cannot be trusted.  They are based on our sense knowledge and can therefore be manipulated and mislead. 

If we want to avoid a rollercoaster of emotional instability, we only have one option; to build our foundation on something immovable; that is of course the Word of God.

We know the story of the wise man who built his house on the sand, and his foolish counterpart who built his house on the sand.  When we build on the correct foundation, we won't be shaken in storms. In the lyrics of that well known song "All other ground is sinking sand".

Don't build your foundation on a shifting platform of emotional idolatry and be thrown up and down and round and round like a rollercoaster.   Stick to the word and you'll find it a much more stable place to be.

Have a great weekend!