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JEREMIAH 31:1-6, NRSV
The Joyful Return of the Exiles
31 At that time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
2 Thus says the Lord:
The people who survived the sword
found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest,
3 the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
4 Again I will build you, and you shall be built,
O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take[c] your tambourines,
and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
5 Again you shall plant vineyards
on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant,
and shall enjoy the fruit.
6 For there shall be a day when sentinels will call
in the hill country of Ephraim:
‘Come, let us go up to Zion,
to the Lord our God.’
DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT: Grace in the Wilderness
Israel was crushed. The walls of Jerusalem were broken down, the city looted and burned. The Temple—Israel’s visual assurance of the presence of God—was a burnt-out ruin. The poor languished in the destroyed land, now a province of the Babylonian empire. Leaders of Israel’s rebellion were executed. Some, like Jeremiah, fled to exile in Egypt. Many, including the king, were deported to Babylon.
The psychological and theological trauma was immense. Who was Israel—this scattered people with no visible assurance of God, no land, and no king?
In the midst of the crisis, the prophet Jeremiah breaks into Israel’s post-traumatic reality with a letter of comfort about a future-creating God. A future hope is certainly good news, but is it enough?
The faithful remnant needed a word for the present as well.
So, Jeremiah calls to mind certain truths that counter their perceived reality of displacement and forsakenness. This future-creating God has always been attentive in Israel’s seasons of wilderness. There was grace in the wilderness between exodus and the promised land. There is likewise grace in the present wilderness experience of exile (31:2). Israel has not been abandoned. Wilderness is not the absence of God or God’s provision. Israel has been loved and cared for. God is certainly a future-creating God but God is also “grace in the wilderness”!
PRAYER:
God, you know the circumstances in which we dwell. May you give us both hope for the future and grace in our present realities.
Linda M. Stargel
Academic Dean
Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies and Biblical Language