I love the OT reading for this next Sunday. It is taken from Jeremiah 31:31-34 and talks about how God is going to make a new covenant with His people. Prior to Jeremiah, God had made a series of covenants with the Hebrews: with Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. Each of these covenants was God reaching out to the people to redeem them and to help them thrive. Each of these covenants, however, the people broke and failed to keep. But does our God give up on us? Does God say, “Three strikes and you’re out”? No! God continues to create new ways to establish a relationship with us. God will even write it on our hearts so that we no longer need to look to others or to search the world for truth: the truth is within us—we need but only look! Our God is a God that loves us even when we do not deserve it. Regardless of how many times we fail God, God continues to reach out to us. Our God is not a God of old, dusty, and rigid ways. No! Our God is a God of new and dynamic things. Spirituality is defined as “the dynamic dimension of human life.” So much of our religion can be static—a this-is-the-way-we-have-always-done-it-and-there-is-no-room-for-inovation kind of religion. For some that may work. For me it does not. Our God is about new things, dynamic things. As we move forward from this time of quarantine and staying-in-place into a new post-pandemic world, what are the new and dynamic things our God wants to do in us and through us? I don’t know! Let’s find out together! Join us this Sunday at 11:00 either in-person or on-line as Katlyn Zulinke, our new Youth Pastor, preaches from John 12:20-33.
Jeremiah 31:33: But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.