A Bad Exchange

Read Jeremiah 2:13

13          “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! (NLT)

We do hear of people giving up on Jesus because he hasn’t somehow come good for them. He has let them down. Or the faith doesn’t make sense any more. Or the church is so corrupt that we can no longer identify with it.

And so some of these disillusioned people turn to some other faith, or no faith at all. Understandable, but self-defeating. They may have jumped from the frying pan to the fire. The problems they had with faith are replaced by another set of problems outside the faith.

Jeremiah speaks of such a situation. The people of God had not only forsaken God but had put their trust in foreign alliances, corrupt leaders, false prophets. They had rejected the warnings of Jeremiah and blithely continued in their godless ways assuming all would be well. They were sadly mistaken. Their substitutes for the one true God were as useless as water wells that leaked.

Many years later, when confronted with puzzling problems concerned with following Jesus, the Apostle Peter assured Jesus he would stick with him. Because there was no other realistic alternative. We all have problems with faith at times. We scratch our heads at God sometimes. But better to trust in him than to hurl ourselves at some false faith.

Living water beats a cracked cistern any day of the week.

Blessings
David Reay