The harvest is past

When death stares you in the face, you don’t mince words. You say exactly what is on your mind. Sometimes the dying words of people are cruel and devastating. At other times they are like ointment that brings healing to fractured relationships.

Jeremiah gave us the haunting text above. Jeremiah had lived to see Jerusalem destroyed by Babylon, its families carried away in chains, and its homes destroyed. He asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” (Jeremiah 8:22). Gilead was famous for a medicinal resin, called the healing of Gilead. We are not saved, said Jeremiah, in spite of the fact there is a remedy, there is healing, there is a physician. Jeremiah knew that the people’s relationship with God, whom they had rejected, was the reason why destruction lay at their door.

In the northern hemisphere, late August and September is harvest time. Life has its seasons just as nature does, but the unknown, uncertain factor in life is, when does the summer end, and you are confronted with eternity?

Individuals who are unprepared to meet God – using the terminology of the New Testament – who are not saved, fall into two categories. Those who know they are not saved, and those who think they are but really are not. The most tragic are those who think they are ready to meet God but who have ignored the clear teaching on Scripture on how to make peace with God.

Jeremiah also records God’s faithful promise which gives us hope. “’You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you’, declares the Lord...” Jeremiah 29:13-14

Today Counts is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information, write to Guidelines Philippines, Box 4000, Makati; e-mail :[email protected]; website www.guidelines.org.