As Jeremiah spoke out in
warning against the enemies of Jerusalem and Judah, he found himself
banished to a dungeon. It was there he began to feel as though God
placed him in that pit, and his tears overflowed, he was overwhelmed,
and he believed himself to be “cut off” or separated from
God. In chapter three and verse fifty-five we see what he did in that
circumstance where we read:
I called upon your
name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon.
The
verse begins, “I called upon your name, O LORD, ...”
Jeremiah does what anyone should
when they are in as much trouble as he. He “called”
or “proclaimed, uttered a loud sound, or shouted” not aimlessly,
but pointedly “upon your name, O LORD”.
He called upon the name of Jehovah, and without regard to another
object or person, he therein called upon God Almighty's name.
The verse goes on to say,
“...out of the low dungeon.” We
notice that Jeremiah called his abiding place, “the low
dungeon” which refers to “the
lowest, the bottom, or lowest parts of” the dungeon area. Jeremiah
was banished to the lowest place a person could be, and in his deep
ostracism he relied upon his only resource still available – the
ability to call upon God for help.
As
we think about these words written by Jeremiah, maybe we feel we are
in a dungeon. Perhaps we have not been placed there by a discomforted
king, but we nonetheless feel that we have been banished to our
current position. If this be so, then let us take a lesson from
Jeremiah and realize that it makes no difference whether our
ostracism is our fault or another's, we have one resource upon which
we may greatly rely – call upon the name of the LORD. Therein we
maintain our greatest resource and thereby we avail ourselves of our
greatest helper – The LORD.
Next
time we see Jeremiah asking God to hear him, so read ahead, and we
shall join together then.
Until
tomorrow...there is more...
Look
for the daily devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From
Generation to Generation”, the marriage book “So, You Want to Be
Married”, and the new devotional “One Year in the Sermon on the
Mount” in all major bookstore sites, www.amazon.com ;
www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, and find it locally at
www.mrzlc.com/bookstore
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