April 14, 2022 | Jeremiah 23:1–8 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue In 2013, Pakistan set a world record by planting 847,275 trees in a single day. In 2016, India broke that record by planting an astounding 49.3 million trees in one day. In 2019, Ethiopia shattered the record by planting 350 million trees across the […]
April 13, 2022 | Jeremiah 21:1–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue In the early church, believers shared whatever they had to meet one another’s needs. Barnabas sold some property and gave the money to the apostles to distribute. Noticing the praise he received, Ananias and his wife Sapphira decided to do the same…almost. They gave part […]
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 5, 2022 | Jeremiah 7:1–11 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue When Jesus cleansed the Temple, he angrily drove out the moneychangers and overturned the tables of those exploiting the poor by selling doves for offerings. “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers’” (Matt. 21:13). […]