I'm Crawling Out Of My Skin, I Hope I Get Under Yours

It's a Stavesacre, morning, man.

See, I got through teaching Lamentations last night as part of my Jeremiah class. Verse by verse, for the most part. We only had two weeks for the five chapters so it wasn't full-blown all-verse thorough, but we got deeper than the gist of it. And a nice lady in my class made this comment about halfway through the class last night, "Wow, I can see why nobody teaches through this book in churches."

We all laughed. I mean, society has hit a low point when the prophet has to point out that moms boiling their babies for food during a siege is a bad thing...which is where we were when she made the comment.

But the book, and the three weeks of study on it, have made me a little chippy. I noticed my brain going in all sorts of different directions during the class and on the drive home...and here are a few snippets:

I wonder if I would teach this book at all if I weren't in an American context. I mean, it's easy to judge the actions of those with no food anywhere when you kind of whined about eating peanut-butter & jelly sandwiches for dinner.

I wonder how a pastor in a war-torn, strife-filled area would teach the book. Like Darfur. Or Afghanistan. Sierra Leone. Name it. I bet that pastor would have a different take than mine.

When it's all thunder and lightning and rainy outside the window of the classroom you're in, it really highlights the atmosphere.

I don't think I have a view of the cause/effect of sin that I should have. In other words, I'm not so sure I take sin all that seriously.

Too often, we pray that God would "act" in our circumstances (usually meaning that He "fix" the problem), when it seems that the message is that we would call on Him to comfort us in our circumstances. In other words, sometimes the best thing for us isn't fixing the problems.

Americans think our government doesn't work well? Man, compared to what it could be...

Jeremiah had a tough gig, and he wasn't above the fray. In other words, he didn't announce judgement and then go back to his luxury condo and live high on the hog. Nope. He lost weight and got sick like the rest of the folks.

When your spiritual life feels like you're trying to pick up sand, the only thing to do is fall back on what you know about God and pray those things. When Jeremiah said he couldn't even remember what it was like to be happy and that he lost his endurance to the point he lost hope, the very next recorded words were "Remember." He falls back on what he knows to be true about God, namely His lovingkindness and compassion. They renew his hope, even if the situation never changes.

It's good to sit in silence while under discipline from the Lord. In our culture, grumbling and complaining seem to rule the day in churches...and individual's lives, too.

Also, I learned that coming home and wanting to decompress by catching up on the local baseball team's game isn't necessarily good. See, I left them up 5-0 in the second inning. After my class, when I got home, they were down 19-6. Really. I was bummed.

So, it's a Stavesacre morning...

...I'll just roll with it, Lamentations and all.