Daily Prophets
Day 84
“The word of God came to me, saying. Thus said God: what wrong did your fathers find in me that they abandoned Me and went after delusion and were deluded? They have forsaken Me, the Fount of living waters.”(Jeremiah 2:1,5,13).
Jeremiah begins chapter 2 with “The word of the Lord came to me”, which is a statement too overwhelming to most of us. We, people of modernity, want to rebel against the idea that God spoke to the Prophets, that God inspired the Prophets, yet for people throughout the generations, these words made sense and spoke of an experience that was envied and sought. I believe we all can hear the ‘call’ of God, that God is ‘calling’ to each of us and the ‘voice’ that ‘spoke’ on Mount Sinai is still reverberating today. This concept expressed in the opening verse of chapter 2 puts a tremendous responsibility on all of us to do the actions that the Call of God is directing us to.
When we don’t, God’s experience, which is what Jeremiah is relating in verse 5, is one of sadness and bewilderment. The question that God is asking is an important one for all of us to ask and respond to. What was/is the wrong that another finds in us in order to abandon us? What is the wrong we find in God to abandon God? What is the wrong we find in another(s) to abandon them? Jeremiah’s words ring so true here-delusion, mendacity, self-deception; these are the root causes of abandonment of God, abandonment of another(s) and people abandoning us. We walk away from God, from another(s) because of our self-deception that there is something better with another(s), idol, human, etc.
The Hebrew word used for what they went after is Hevel, mist. We run after illusions and delusions and we can never really connect or hold on to them because they are like mist, they disappear quickly and we are left to delude ourselves more they will come back. This is the way we forsake God the most, I believe Jeremiah is saying in the last verse above. Our delusions cause us to forsake our covenant with God, the “Fount of living waters”. We continue to forget that God is the source and has all of the wisdom, qualities and desire to impart to us the how to live well-and we reject God for some delusion, self-deception, unwilling to be responsive to God’s ‘call’.
Rabbi Heschel teaches us “God’s pain and disappointment ring throughout the book of Jeremiah. What a sublime paradox for the Creator of heaven and earth to implore the people so humbly:”(The Prophets pg. 109/110). Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that WE MATTER, to God, to another(s) and therefore have to take the actions that are responsive to this truth. God is not too haughty to not implore us to turn back, to remind the people of their folly and self-deception, not to embarrass them but to encourage them. God is encouraging us each and every day to return, do T’Shuvah and stop forsaking God, another(s) and ourselves. Rabbi Heschel reminds us that God’s sorrow ring out in these words above, how often have you and/or me felt this sorrow when someone abandons us, forsakes us, deceives us for their gain rather than principle?
Our politicians need to look at themselves in the mirror and see how they have forsaken God in their treatment of people ‘different’ than themselves. We, the People, have to remind them of God’s call to all of us to stop deluding ourselves and another(s) with lies and mendacity. Stop judging another human being by the color of their skin or the faith they practice and make the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, come true, people will be judged on the content of their character. Elected officials in States and the Federal Government, the content of your character is showing and it is not very pretty when it comes to Voting Rights, to “all men are created equal” and your denial of the “unalienable rights”.
In recovery, we are veterans at forsaking God, we deluded ourselves with lies, mendacities, false solutions and sought out new Founts. Be they drugs, alcohol, money, power, prestige, etc. we ran after anything that would give us a fix and found these delusions to be like the mist that Jeremiah talks about, gave us a quick respite and then made our lives exponentially worse. In recovery, we recommitted to our covenant with God, we continually seek to improve our relationship with God through bettering our relationships with another(s). We take a daily inventory to find the lies we tell ourselves and another(s) in order to see truth and repair damage.
I have experienced my own forsaking of God during my addictive years and, at times, in my recovery. The difference is in recovery, I returned to the covenant quickly and stopped engaging in self-deception. I have been abandoned by another(s) in my recovery and each time it hurts and I feel the sorrow that Jeremiah speaks about. I know what I did to help the people around me was answering God’s call to me. When the result was them abandoning me, I can’t allow their deception to change me. How are you forsaking God, another(s) through delusion? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark