ELOGOS for Thursday

​Jeremiah 20: 8b-9
For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. 
* * * * * * *
Jeremiah's ministry as a prophet foreshadowed Jesus' ministry. Jeremiah provided a voice of warning, salvation and hope to a people in deep trouble. It would all work out in the end, but not in the way anyone would expect. The people to whom Jeremiah was called would hate him and they would end up conquered and exiled clinging by a thread to the word of hope from a prophet they hated. Jesus knew that obedience to God would lead him through ministry with reluctant people and weak-knee-ed disciples until it got him killed and raised from the dead. It isn't any wonder why there were moments when Jeremiah and Jesus hated their jobs. But within a breath of admitting it, they both knew that being disobedient to the call of God was not good for their health either. To be a follower of Jesus Christ is not a cake walk - not then and not now. In the words of the great theologian, the Rev. Doctor Craig Borchardt, sometimes you just have to "gut it up."
* * * * * * *
Holy God, take my guts, please. Amen.