daily java

Daily Java:

You will never again return to the land you yearn for. (Jeremiah 22:27)

In the book of Jeremiah, the writer tells his people that they are being punished by God for past national sins and that they are going to have to go into exile from their homeland for 70 years. He tells them that he knows they do not want to and that they want to come back home, but then he tells them that they will never again see the land they love.

I want to be young again. I am not sure why I have been feeling this way, but I am not happy with the way my life has gone and want to change it, to do things differently, to make more of a difference than I have.

I read a quote today by somebody, I forgot who, that said, one idea of hell is on the last day of your life, just before you die, you meet a person who is what you could have been. To the writer, that was hell, too see what you could have accomplished, what you could have achieved if you had let yourself do it. I personally do not think I could bear it to see what I could have done.

When I was younger, people told me a lot that I was going to accomplish great things one day, that I was talented enough to do so. But I didn’t.

I made a lot of mistakes and bad choices throughout my life. And I would almost give anything to go back and change them. but instead, I am 63 and starting all over again in a new denomination. I don’t have but maybe 15 years left, 20 at the max, and here I am starting again.

I had the talent to become a great musician but grew up in an acappella church. I could have been a writer but never gave myself to it. If I had been more judicious, I could have been a big name preacher. I had the speaking ability and the personality, and when I was younger, the ability to get people to follow me.

But I was none of those things. Instead, I went from church to church, seeking something. Wanderlust afflicted me and I dragged my family around all over the place. I am broke, with little or no credit rating. I could not buy a car or house if my life depended on it.

I am an older man living in a tiny town, pastoring a tiny church and was grateful to get the job.

I also feel I have left out things I wanted to do in life for one reason or other. At many points in my life, I can point to a decision that was bad and resulted in our leaving where we were, or failing in where we were. I can also see where I could have gone in a drastically different direction if I had just known what I know now.

And I want to change it. But I cannot. I will never be any younger, no matter what I want or what good I think I might have done in the kingdom or fun I might have had in life.

Hebrews says that we live once and then face the judgment. Everybody does and so will I, even if I do not want to.

It is a foolish wish, I know. And it is one I wish I could get out of my mind. I think about it at night and consider the changes, how people would respond to me, like me better, etc.

Rampant nostalgia for that which is irretrievable is tiresome.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elim and journeyed into the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the fifteenth day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt. There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron. “If only the LORD had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”  (Exodus 16:1-3)

The Israelites had a point. God had told them to go into the wilderness to be delivered from slavery. But the problem was, were they being delivered from the fat into the fire? Was the delivery worse than the slavery?

It is easy to be down on the Israelites. But the problem was, they were afraid. They were out in the middle of nowhere and they were running out of supplies. What were they going to do?

God had promised to take care of them, but their children were beginning to get hungry. They had plenty of god and jewels and such, because the Egyptians had given them anything they wanted just to leave after the last plague, the death of all the Egyptian first born sons. But you cannot eat gold. What were they going to do?

So they turned on Moses. Since they couldn’t see or touch God, they held Moses responsible for all the things happening to them. That, of course, is the downside of being in charge. You get the blame as well as the credit.

They began to glorify their life in Egypt. They were slaves, ordered about by stern taskmasters, people who delighted in making their lives miserable. But they had enough (at least in their minds) to eat. Pots of meat, all the bread they could eat, a great life they had in Egypt. In between whippings, they had a wonderful time. In between 14 hour days making brick under deadline with not enough material, they were really happy. Sitting around full, content, happy.

That was all in their minds, of course. The reality of the good old days is always worse than the memory. But in their minds, it was strong. They were better off doing things the way they had done them before even though it wasn’t a good life.

The same thing happened a little further down in the chapter when they got thirsty. “Did you bring us out here to die?” they scream.

It is a truth that people are never happy. They always remember their past with fondness and their future with fear. It has always been like that.

I know things did not always go well for me as a young man, but I remember it as a good time for which, sometimes, I yearn to recover. I was strong, I was healthy, I had a lot of dark hair, my wife was healthy and pain free. But I forget the times we had such financial trouble, the problems that came up in a new marriage, all of the attendant difficulties that came with being young.

Would I go back? Yes, in a New York minute. Would I be happier? Probably not. I would have to face all these difficulties again.

Were the Israelites happy in Egypt? No, they were slaves under a brutal master. Would they be happier there than in the wilderness? No, because they would still be slaves under a brutal master. In the desert, even with its problems, they were a free nation.

That came with some problems, of course, some uncertainties, some difficulties, some fear. But it also came with the blessing of being God’s free nation.

I don’t think they ever figured this out. They went from being mad at God for not speaking enough, to being mad at his prophets for speaking Too much (at least in their viewpoint). They worshiped every idol in sight until God finally punished them by taking away their free country, then they worshiped his law trying to get it back.

They could never worship him, just simply accept him. And their national fear made them angry, lashing out at anyone who disagreed with them

A sad bunch of people.