Jeremiah 36:27-31
As if animated by the Holy Spirit, the scroll of Jeremiah and Baruch takes on a life of its own. Actually, a life, death, and resurrection.
The king thinks the matter is over when he casts the scroll into the fire. But God has other plans. A new scroll will be written, decreeing all that the previous one had said and more. And we get the feeling that if the king burns that one, a new scroll will be on the way, and a new one after that, and a new one after that. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “God will generate as many scrolls as necessary to override the king’s zeal for autonomy.”
The God of the Bible relentlessly opens new doors and clears pathways from the brush. God is relentless in drawing new life from the ashes of old life and new light from the darkness of a tomb. To borrow from the vision statement of the United Church of Christ a few years ago: just when you think you have reached a period, God reveals it as simply a comma.
And this is, in essence, the good news. The story—the scroll—is not finished until love, healing, and goodness are revealed. And if you find yourself at a point in the scroll where these things have not yet been revealed, then you just need to keep reading, either from that scroll or another one that is surely on the way.
Source: Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 353.
Consider
What presumed period in my life has God revealed as a comma?
Pray
God whose story only ends in healing and wholeness, open my heart to receive your holy imagination this day. Amen.