{"id":6941,"date":"2015-09-22T00:05:58","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T07:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6941"},"modified":"2015-09-21T11:42:29","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T18:42:29","slug":"shared-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/09\/22\/shared-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Shared Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe harvest is past, the summer is ended,
\nand we are not saved.\u201d
\nFor the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
\nI mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
\nIs there no balm in Gilead?
\nIs there no physician there?
\nWhy then has the health of my poor people
\nnot been restored?
\nO that my head were a spring of water,
\nand my eyes a fountain of tears,
\nso that I might weep day and night
\nfor the slain of my poor people!
\nO that I had in the desert
\na traveler\u2019s lodging place,
\nthat I might leave my people
\nand go away from them!
\nFor they are all adulterers,
\na band of traitors.
\nThey bend their tongues like bows;
\nthey have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
\nfor they proceed from evil to evil,
\nand they do not know me, says the LORD. (Jeremiah 8:20-9:3)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our pain is God\u2019s pain. God expresses his suffering over the suffering of his people. Their wounds are self-inflicted, they have turned their backs on God and gone off their own way. They have been unfaithful to him\u2014committed adultery\u2014by worshipping other gods than Yahweh. They have believed lies rather than the truth and as a consequence, they no longer know God: they believe lies about him, have false notions about his intentions, believe the worst about him in order to justify for themselves the poor choices they have made. Like a husband watching his wife spiral down into addiction, leaving him for abusive relationships and suffering privation and misery, so God is miserable, not just because of the loss of affection, but because he still loves his estranged wife and hopes to rescue her from herself.<\/p>\n

But he also knows that the time has not yet come. Israel must suffer for a long time, must endure significant pain, must hit rock bottom, before she will be ready to hear God\u2019s voice again and accept his help, his rescue, and be willing to restore the shattered relationship.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, God will cry over his people. Gilead, the hill of testimony and the region around it, was noted for its spices, oils and aromatic gums. The question regarding balm in Gilead was rhetorical, akin to asking someone in a swimming pool if they\u2019re wet enough yet. The solution for Israel\u2019s suffering was obvious to God. Their pain was entirely unnecessary. They already knew what God expected and it was so easy.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s discipline is not only unpleasant for us, it is also unpleasant for God.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.\u201d For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6943,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions\/6943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}