Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“O hope of Israel! O Lord!
All who forsake you shall be put to shame;
those who turn away from you shall be recorded in the underworld,
for they have forsaken the fountain of living water, the Lord.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, February 3, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Why would anyone turn away from the source of life? Lack of trust. It’s that simple. Adam and Eve’s first sin wasn’t about disobeying an arbitrary command. It was about deciding that God couldn’t be relied on to take care of them—they needed to “have their eyes opened” so they could do it themselves.
Truth be told, I think this is completely understandable. When I look at the state of the world—environmentally, politically, socially, economically—I have a hard time seeing God at work. In the face of instability, when we can see no evidence that God actually cares, it’s easy to turn away and put all our efforts into controlling what we can.
The problem is that it doesn’t work. Jeremiah is yelling that forsaking the fountain of living water will result in shame and punishment, but that’s just bluster, I think. God doesn’t have to punish us. The basic fact is that when we forsake the fountain of living water, we punish ourselves. We cut ourselves off from God—from faith, from hope, from those things that make living in an unstable world possible.
The good news is that the fountain of living water will never forsake us. We are continually invited to return and drink deep of the only thing that truly sustains us.
Where do I put my trust on a day to day basis?