July 16, 2024 - Jeremiah 12-15

There are hard jobs.  There are scary jobs.  There are dangerous jobs.  There are jobs to be completed in anonymity and without and words of thanks from others.  There are jobs that no one wishes to undertake.  There are jobs that are just downright crazy.  And, then, there is the job Jeremiah was called to do.  We are not surprised when we read that Job complained to God (12:1, 15:10).  The people stoned him, they threw him into a dry cistern and left him there to die, and they mocked him.  This went on for forty years during which Jeremiah heard only scorn and ridicule.  How could he do this?  You have to look back to chapter one and the story of his call, a story reflected in the life and martyrdom of Bill Wallace, a Southern Baptist missionary in mainland China during WWII and immediately afterward.  The communists had forced missionaries out of the country but Wallace refused to leave.  Imprisoned, tortured, and eventually martyred, Wallace had told the officials that God had placed him there and that only God could remove him.  God calls and places his ministers.  They stay wherever God puts them, doing what they have been commanded.  Why?  Because God told them so.  Pretty simple.

When the storms of life are raging,

stand by me;

when the storms of life are raging,

stand by me.

When the world is tossing me

like a ship upon the sea,

thou who rulest wind and water,

stand by me.

In the midst of tribulation,

stand by me; (stand by me)

When the hosts of hell assail . . .

In the midst of faults and failures . . .

In the midst of persecution . . .

When I’m growing old and feeble . . .

O thou Lily of the Valley,

stand by me.   -- Charles Albert Tindley (1905)