Vicar Anand’s Devotion for September 17. 2020:
Jeremiah 32:16-17 “After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, then I prayed to the Lord, saying, 17 ‘Ah Lord God! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult'”
As per the above scripture, the prophet Jeremiah is in prison. Since he had preached of God’s wrath and anger to a nation of people who are rebellious and stiff-necked. So, the voice of the Lord is not pleasing to them and they just wanted to shut his mouth. Finally, they threw him into a pit. Now Jeremiah is in great distress, torn with feelings of loneliness and grief, despairing of hope for his people, rejected by the entire nation. But the preoccupation of his heart is to extol the glory, majesty, name, honor, and works of God. He was not preoccupied with his own pain. He was not obsessed with being liberated from his circumstances.
But with overwhelming pain and suffering came prayer and worship. “I prayed to the LORD, saying, ‘Ah Lord GOD! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You, who shows lovingkindness to thousands, but repays the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them, O great and mighty God. The LORD of hosts is His name; great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men, giving to everyone according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds; who has set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and even to this day both in Israel and among mankind; and You have made a name for Yourself, as at this day'”
Presently, all is believers are preoccupied with the pandemic as well as with millions of questions in mind about when this world will become normal again. We all also pretty much know that we are in a most unnatural and unimaginable situation like Jonah when he was put into fish belly. But in that suffocating darkness, discomfort and desperate situation Jonah’s prayer is recorded in Jonah 2:2 He said:“In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.“Therefore, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ our task is to know the character of God so well that we can take His very being and presence as a promise, a promise made incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
Vicar Anand Darla (GSSAM 4211 Carol Ave, Fremont)