Life's Inanities and Ironies

In the blackest midnight of Judah’s story—when the temple lay in ashes, when mothers ate their own children in the siege, when Jeremiah sat weeping on the ruins with a heart shattered into a thousand altars—God did something utterly outrageous. He made a promise that still sets the heavens ringing. Not a patch.   Not a reform.   Not a stricter law with better enforcement. A **new** covenant. Jeremiah 31:31–34 (the verses that burned through the prophet’s tears like dawn through prison bars): > “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD,   > that I will make a **new covenant**   > with the house of Israel , and with the house of Judah:   > Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers   > in the day that I took them by the hand   > to bring them out of the land of Egypt ;   > which my covenant they brake,   > although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:...

He stands alone on the scorched hills above Jerusalem , cloak torn by thorns and kings alike, eyes already red from forty years of unshed tears. The city beneath him is a smoking skeleton—golden temple melted into slag, walls breached like a shattered ribcage, the air thick with the stench of burning cedar and unburied dead. And Jeremiah weeps. Not the polite glistening of a funeral. Not the dignified single tear of a priest. He weeps like a man whose very bones have turned to salt water. “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain daughter of my people!” He means it literally. He wants to bleed tears until the valleys flood, until the Kidron runs crimson with grief, until there is no more dryness left in him—because only then might the horror finally be enough. For four decades he walked those streets with a heart flayed open. Barefoot in the palace courts. Neck in the stocks while children pelted him with dung. Lowe...

We don’t read Lamentations much anymore. It’s too raw. Too uncomfortable. Too much like looking in a mirror we’ve spent decades trying to avoid. But chapter 5 is not poetry for the faint of heart. It is a naked, desperate prayer from a people who finally realized the party was over and the bill had come due. Jerusalem lies in ashes. The temple is gone. Children are starving in the streets. Princes hang from enemy gallows. Women are violated in the holy city itself. And the survivors—those who once boasted of their heritage, their covenant, their “blessings”—now lift trembling voices and say: “Remember, O LORD, what has come upon us;   look, and see our disgrace!” (Lam 5:1) They are not whining. They are confessing.   They are not blaming Babylon . They are blaming themselves. And if that doesn’t terrify Bible-believing Christians in America today , nothing will. Because everything they describe is here.   Everything. Our inheritance has been handed over t...

  “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” – Psalm 127:1 Today we walked through brand-new doors to us, sat in brand-new chairs, and lifted our voices under a roof and in an auditorium that still smells like fresh paint and answered prayer. After years of someone else's sound system, folding tables and chairs, baptizing folks in borrowed horse troughs and ponds, God has given us a permanent place to call home. But let’s be crystal-clear from day one: this building is not the church. You are. I am. The blood-bought, born-again believers gathered around the Word and the Table —that’s the church Jesus is building. The bricks are just a tool in His hand. 1. A Monument to God’s Faithfulness    Some of you sold hay bales, held yard sales, skipped vacations, and gave when the offering plate looked empty felt heavier than when it was full. Some of you prayed until your knees left permanent dents in the carpet. Some of you lost sleep over permits an...