Man, I really want you to like me

and I want you to like my blog.

I care about you, those of you who stop here to read

wanting to press deeper into Jesus

I want to lighten the load that squeezes your chest and constricts your joy.

I . . . I . . . I

want to make you laugh for a moment

and believe everything is going to be okay.

And I was determined to do that today.

Short, I said to myself. Write short. Write funny. Cheer them up. Calm them down.

And then, I turned, as I do,

to my daily devotional reading seeking inspiration from God’s Word

and this was the verse from Jeremiah 6:14:

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

And honestly, my first thought was, “Crud. You’re not going to let me be funny today, are you, Lord?”

(and that, in a nutshell, is why I need Jesus, my friends.)

The world is a heavy place these days

you know,

sitting in the gun sights of hostile nations that didn’t exist when we studied geography in the sixties

and mingling, unwittingly, with explosive young men searching for causes, making victims of us all, turning every public event into a mine field.

We hear about doctors who snap the spinal cords of infants fresh from the womb and try to convince us it isn’t murder,

we watch our neighbors flaunt God’s law, declaring that the Almighty either doesn’t exist or needs to evolve along with the rest of us

or has been misread and misinterpreted and should feel lucky this enlightened generation has come along to set Him straight and clear His name.

And we are crushed beneath this load, these everyday weights, that turn our eyes off of heaven to watch our every step lest we trip and fall ourselves.

And so, I was a little annoyed with God,

petulant that He didn’t see the same need I did, to lift you up and to help you rest for a moment,

until I decided to read the verse in context:

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit.
 They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.  Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all;  they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when I punish them,” says the Lord.” Jeremiah 6:13-15

And in the next verse, I remembered, that God loves you, dear readers, a million times more than I ever could

and that He sees your burden clearer than I could even stand to see it

and He  desires for you to feel joy and find rest from the intensity of our planet and the times in which we live

but His ways are not my ways,

He doesn’t want to make you laugh for a moment, He wants to set you free to rise above and to live forever.

The next verse says this:

“This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look;  ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.  Jeremiah 6:16a

And it made me laugh to see how the Lord led me to the right answer

even though my motives were mixed at the start.

He truly does know best

and He truly does see us

and He truly understands our burden

and He has the answer.

Find rest for your  souls, today, loved ones.  We are at a crossroads but our God knows the way home.