April 12, 2022 | Jeremiah 20:7–18 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue The famous artist Donatello completed a life-size marble sculpture of the prophet Jeremiah in 1427. If you visited the museum in Florence, Italy, you’d note that Jeremiah looks fatigued, even exhausted. His face suggests profound sadness and frustration as well as a hint of inner […]
April 11, 2022 | Jeremiah 18:1–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue My youngest child and I recently went on a “daddy-daughter date” to a pottery shop. As we chatted, she painted a round trinket box in a rainbow of bright colors. Two weeks later, we picked up the finished piece, which had been glazed and fired […]
April 10, 2022 | Jeremiah 17:19–27 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Disaster movies such as Independence Day, Deep Impact, and The Day After Tomorrow like to use special effects to show the Statue of Liberty being destroyed. It’s a shorthand way of symbolizing the destruction of America. For the people of Jeremiah’s time, the gates of […]
April 9, 2022 | Jeremiah 14:1–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Jeremiah was called “the weeping prophet.” He was not just sad in an emotional sense. His tears expressed deep grief for sin and its consequences. At the same time Jeremiah’s grief was rooted in faith that God would ultimately make everything right. In that same […]
April 8, 2022 | Jeremiah 13:1–11 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue I have a vivid childhood memory of attending Good News Club. The teacher held up a candy bar and offered it to whomever would receive it. I sprinted to the front and grabbed my gift! Then she told us salvation was like that candy bar—a […]
April 7, 2022 | Jeremiah 12:1–13 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Just prior to today’s reading, enemies in Jeremiah’s hometown of Anathoth had plotted to kill him, but God had revealed their plot (Jer. 11:18–23). Without this revelation, the prophet would have been “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (11:19). God promised to punish […]
April 6, 2022 | Jeremiah 10:1–16 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue In The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow dreams of getting a brain. On the road, he sings, “I would not be just a nothin’ / My head all full of stuffin’…If I only had a brain.” Dorothy agrees, “With the thoughts you’ll be thinkin’/ You […]
April 4, 2022 | Jeremiah 5:20–31 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Digging into our sin is like peeling an onion. We’re never done—there always seems to be another layer. And the more layers are revealed, the more we recognize the depths of our sinfulness and our inability to help ourselves. As Jeremiah said later in the […]
April 3, 2022 | Jeremiah 2:1–13 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Although 70 percent of Americans claim to be Christians, many do not attend any church. Denominational numbers are declining, as are church donations. Every year, about 6,000 to 10,000 local churches close their doors permanently. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water. JEREMIAH […]
April 1, 2022 | Jeremiah 1:1–3 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Jeremiah has been called “the weeping prophet.” Why? Because he brought mostly bad news. It grieved him even more that God’s people did not respond with repentance. They continued to sin, and judgment inevitably arrived. No wonder he wept! What was said through the prophet […]