Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water. ~ Jeremiah 2:12-13
A broken jug cannot hold water. It spills instead upon the hot sands of the desert, seeping through the cracks. And we do the same with our very lives! We cannot provide even the barest necessity of our lives: water. And we certainly cannot produce the living water the Lord offers.
It began long ago in the Garden. Adam and Even hid in shame. Their inadequate leaves could not hide their own sinful broken hearts. We, too, scoop our hands and pour into our own inadequacies, our own meager resources. We insist on our own stubborn wills instead of bending to the ways of the Lord.
Have you not brought this upon yourself
by forsaking the Lord your God,
when he led you in the way? ~ Jeremiah 2:17
We each have forsaken the Lord.
But hope is not lost. Though we can only produce broken cisterns, the Lord can use our own clay pots to show His strength:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us~ 2 Corinthians 4:7
Only by coming to the mender, the Potter, can our brokenness be formed again into what is good:
And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel ~Jeremiah 18:4-6
May we each yield our own broken cisterns and clay pots to the Potter who can shape us and mold us no matter how shattered we might be.
Photo by Daniel Tafjord on Unsplash
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