Glass Ceilings and Cracked Cisterns

The oracle in Jeremiah chapter two is quite long. As such, there’s a lot to be gained from meditating upon it. I hope that you will have opportunity to do so this week. What I’d like to address in the devotional is what I see as the core of chapter two: abandoning God.

Sadly, we’re all too familiar with the suffering of abandoned children. We know the empty look in their eyes…and the even emptier feeling in their hearts. There is little that is more torturous than feeling oneself unloved and unappreciated. Jeremiah reveals to us that it is just this sort of pain that God Himself suffers when His people abandon Him to place their trust in other “gods” (i.e., other things)

According to Jeremiah, the people had committed two fundamental evils: They have abandoned Me—the Fountain of Living Water; And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! (2:13) In the midst of the current economic crisis, I fear that many Christians are discovering that they too have placed their trust in cracked cisterns.

Too often, we allow our faith to degenerate into a product to be marketed, rather than a radical counter-cultural call to be lived out. We expect to be popular…not holy. Eventually, however, the cracked cisterns that we have relied upon to keep us afloat drain out, and we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep pit.

It is my prayer that all of us who find ourselves at the bottom of a cracked cistern now, will respond to this time of privation and testing by restoring our worship of the one true Fountain. So that future generations will not look back on us some day an apply Jeremiah’s pithy and pitiable assessment: They worshiped worthless idols, only to become worthless themselves. (2:4)

-- justin

Memory Verse

Picture of an empty cistern

Additional Thought/Discussion Questions

1. What does 2:8 suggest about the role of leadership (both political and religious) in the abandonment of God? Is it even possible for a large group to abandon God without the willing compliance of the group leadership?

2. How does God’s self-identification as the “Fountain of Living Water” (2:13) relate to Jesus’ promise to the woman at the well to give her “living water” (John 4:10; see also John 7:36-38)

3. God’s anguished cry to the people of Jeremiah’s day included these words: …I was the One Who planted you, choosing a vine of the purest stock—the very best. How did you grow into this corrupt wild vine? (2:21) Have you ever made a good start of something in your life, only to see it fall apart…a marriage…a job…a child? What steps do you plan to take in the future to prevent the cycle from repeating?