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broken by our brokenness

Jeremiah 8:18-9:2 (JDV)

Jeremiah 8:18 My joy has flown away; grief has settled on me. My heart is sick.

Jeremiah 8:19 Notice, listen – the cry of my dear people from a faraway land, “Is Yahveh no longer in Zion, her King not within her?” Why have they provoked me with their carved images, with their temporary foreign idols?

Jeremiah 8:20 Harvest has passed, summer has ended, but we have not been delivered.

Jeremiah 8:21 I am broken by the brokenness of my dear people. I mourn; horror has taken hold of me.

Jeremiah 8:22 Is there no medicine in Gilead? Is there no physician there? So why has the healing of my dear people not come about?

Jeremiah 9:1 If my head were a flowing spring, my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night over the victims [1] among my dear people. [2]

Jeremiah 9:2 If only I had a traveler’s lodging place in the open country, I would abandon my people and depart from them, because they are all adulterers, a solemn assembly of traitors.

broken by our brokenness

Jeremiah weeps because he is reflecting the sorrow of God, the mourning of the Lord who sits alone in an empty field, and the harvest has passed, and there has been no deliverance.

Yes, this is the same God who sent the foreign invaders to devour his people from the land. But that does not change the fact that God is broken by their brokenness. He mourns their loss. He is horrified by their situation.

We serve a God who embraces the shame of our brokenness. Our Lord Jesus showed us that by breaking the bread, after he told us that it represents his body. He knows the brokenness that sin creates, and he has taken that brokenness upon himself, so that we can be healed.

Thank you, Lord, for being broken by our brokenness – for making a way of healing for us through the cross.

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[1] חָלָל = victim. Jeremiah 9:1; 14:18; 25:33; 41:9; 51:4, 47, 49, 52.
[2] Jeremiah 9:- 1-26 in English Bibles are 8:23-9:25 in the Hebrew.