Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 8.18-9.6 and John 8.12-20
This Lenten season as I read these passages, I am struck by how much God wanted to be in relationship with us, and still does. The wayward and tone deaf people of Judah were not living the way God wanted them to live. The prophets, including Jeremiah, heard the cries of their people and lamented that there was no relief for them (no balm in Gilead). God certainly expresses contempt for the people who are "proceeding from evil to evil", yet twice in this Old Testament passage regrets his people do not "know" and even refuse to "know" him. Lots of Christians speak of God's grace as something that didn't exist before God sent his Son to us, but to me God's grace fairly leaps off the page in Jeremiah's lament. We deceive, slander, commit iniquity, fail to repent and God still wants to "know" us—to be in relationship with us. Sounds like grace to me—something we surely don't deserve, but God wants to give us anyway because he loves us so much! Amazing. I love the book of Jeremiah.
Then the whole idea of our knowing God appears again in the John 8 passage. Jesus comes to be our light, to enlighten us, if you will, about God's desire to know us and be in right relationship with him. As a kid I used to stare at one of those pictures of a blue-eyed, blonde Jesus in Sunday School (a little puzzled as to how we knew that he was blue-eyed and blonde), but pretty clear about the reason for the halo around his head. What else would the "light of the world" have around him? My delight about Easter has always had a lot to do with knowing that God wanted to be our God and have us be his people so much, that he sent Jesus to help us understand. We can keep on doing what doesn't edify or satisfy, or we can turn away from all that keeps us from following—from "knowing".
Susan Holloway, Class, ETC. member
