121 You are right, O God, and you set things right. I can't argue with that. But I do have some questions: Why do bad people have it so good? Why do con artists make it big? 2 You planted them and they put down roots. They flourished and produced fruit. They talk as if they're old friends with you, but they couldn't care less about you. 3 Meanwhile, you know me inside and out. You don't let me get by with a thing! Make them pay for the way they live, pay with their lives, like sheep marked for slaughter. 4 How long do we have to put up with this - the country depressed, the farms in ruin - And all because of wickedness, these wicked lives? Even animals and birds are dying off Because they'll have nothing to do with God and think God has nothing to do with them. 5 "So, Jeremiah, if you're worn out in this footrace with men, what makes you think you can race against horses? And if you can't keep your wits during times of calm, what's going to happen when troubles break loose like the Jordan in flood? 6 Those closest to you, your own brothers and cousins, are working against you. They're out to get you. They'll stop at nothing. Don't trust them, especially when they're smiling.
7 "I will abandon the House of Israel, walk away from my beloved people. I will turn over those I most love to those who are her enemies. 8 She's been, this one I held dear, like a snarling lion in the jungle, Growling and baring her teeth at me - and I can't take it anymore. 9 Has this one I hold dear become a preening peacock? But isn't she under attack by vultures? Then invite all the hungry animals at large, invite them in for a free meal! 10 Foreign, scavenging shepherds will loot and trample my fields, Turn my beautiful, well-cared-for fields into vacant lots of tin cans and thistles. 11 They leave them littered with junk - a ruined land, a land in lament. The whole countryside is a wasteland, and no one will really care. 12 "The barbarians will invade, swarm over hills and plains. The judgment sword of God will take its toll from one end of the land to the other. Nothing living will be safe. 13 They will plant wheat and reap weeds. Nothing they do will work out. They will look at their meager crops and wring their hands. All this the result of God's fierce anger!"
14 God's Message: "Regarding all the bad neighbors who abused the land I gave to Israel as their inheritance: I'm going to pluck them out of their lands, and then pluck Judah out from among them. 15 Once I've pulled the bad neighbors out, I will relent and take them tenderly to my heart and put them back where they belong, put each of them back in their home country, on their family farms. 16 Then if they will get serious about living my way and pray to me as well as they taught my people to pray to that god Baal, everything will go well for them. 17 But if they won't listen, then I'll pull them out of their land by the roots and cart them off to the dump. Total destruction!" God's Decree.
131 God told me, "Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don't even take them off to wash them." 2 So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on. 3 Then God told me, 4 "Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock." 5 So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath. 6 Next, after quite a long time, God told me, "Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there." 7 So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless. 8 God explained, 9 "This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem - 10 a wicked bunch of people who won't obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They're going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. 11 Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care" - God's Decree - "so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.
12 "And then tell them this: 'God's Message, personal from the God of Israel: Every wine jug should be full of wine.' "And they'll say, 'Of course. We know that. Every wine jug should be full of wine!' 13 "Then you'll say, 'This is what God says: Watch closely. I'm going to fill every person who lives in this country - the kings who rule from David's throne, the priests, the prophets, the citizens of Jerusalem - with wine that will make them drunk. 14 And then I'll smash them, smash the wine-filled jugs - old and young alike. Nothing will stop me. Not an ounce of pity or mercy or compassion will slow me down. Every last drunken jug of them will be smashed!'" The Light You Always Took for Granted
15 Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don't stay stuck in your ways! It's God's Message we're dealing with here. 16 Let your lives glow bright before God before he turns out the lights, Before you trip and fall on the dark mountain paths. The light you always took for granted will go out and the world will turn black. 17 If you people won't listen, I'll go off by myself and weep over you, Weep because of your stubborn arrogance, bitter, bitter tears, Rivers of tears from my eyes, because God's sheep will end up in exile. 18 Tell the king and the queen-mother, "Come down off your high horses. Your dazzling crowns will tumble off your heads." 19 The villages in the Negev will be surrounded, everyone trapped, And Judah dragged off to exile, the whole country dragged to oblivion. 20 Look, look, Jerusalem! Look at the enemies coming out of the north! What will become of your flocks of people, the beautiful flocks in your care? 21 How are you going to feel when the people you've played up to, looked up to all these years Now look down on you? You didn't expect this? Surprise! The pain of a woman having a baby!
22 Do I hear you saying, "What's going on here? Why me?" The answer's simple: You're guilty, hugely guilty. Your guilt has your life endangered, your guilt has you writhing in pain. 23 Can an African change skin? Can a leopard get rid of its spots? So what are the odds on you doing good, you who are so long-practiced in evil? 24 "I'll blow these people away - like wind-blown leaves. 25 You have it coming to you. I've measured it out precisely." God's Decree. "It's because you forgot me and embraced the Big Lie, that so-called god Baal. 26 I'm the one who will rip off your clothes, expose and shame you before the watching world. 27 Your obsessions with gods, gods, and more gods, your goddess affairs, your god-adulteries. Gods on the hills, gods in the fields - every time I look you're off with another god. O Jerusalem, what a sordid life! Is there any hope for you!"
141 God's Message that came to Jeremiah regarding the drought: 2 "Judah weeps, her cities mourn. The people fall to the ground, moaning, while sounds of Jerusalem's sobs rise up, up. 3 The rich people sent their servants for water. They went to the cisterns, but the cisterns were dry. They came back with empty buckets, wringing their hands, shaking their heads. 4 All the farm work has stopped. Not a drop of rain has fallen. The farmers don't know what to do. They wring their hands, they shake their heads. 5 Even the doe abandons her fawn in the field because there is no grass - 6 Eyes glazed over, on her last legs, nothing but skin and bones." 7 We know we're guilty. We've lived bad lives - but do something, God. Do it for your sake! Time and time again we've betrayed you. No doubt about it - we've sinned against you. 8 Hope of Israel! Our only hope! Israel's last chance in this trouble! Why are you acting like a tourist, taking in the sights, here today and gone tomorrow? 9 Why do you just stand there and stare, like someone who doesn't know what to do in a crisis? But God, you are, in fact, here, here with us! You know who we are - you named us! Don't leave us in the lurch.
10 Then God said of these people: "Since they loved to wander this way and that, never giving a thought to where they were going, I will now have nothing more to do with them - except to note their guilt and punish their sins." The Killing Fields 11 God said to me, "Don't pray that everything will turn out all right for this people. 12 When they skip their meals in order to pray, I won't listen to a thing they say. When they redouble their prayers, bringing all kinds of offerings from their herds and crops, I'll not accept them. I'm finishing them off with war and famine and disease." 13 I said, "But Master, God! Their preachers have been telling them that everything is going to be all right - no war and no famine - that there's nothing to worry about." 14 Then God said, "These preachers are liars, and they use my name to cover their lies. I never sent them, I never commanded them, and I don't talk with them. The sermons they've been handing out are sheer illusion, tissues of lies, whistlings in the dark. 15 "So this is my verdict on them: All the preachers who preach using my name as their text, preachers I never sent in the first place, preachers who say, 'War and famine will never come here' - these preachers will die in war and by starvation. 16 And the people to whom they've been preaching will end up as corpses, victims of war and starvation, thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem unburied - no funerals for them or their wives or their children! I'll make sure they get the full brunt of all their evil.
17 "And you, Jeremiah, will say this to them: "'My eyes pour out tears. Day and night, the tears never quit. My dear, dear people are battered and bruised, hopelessly and cruelly wounded. 18 I walk out into the fields, shocked by the killing fields strewn with corpses. I walk into the city, shocked by the sight of starving bodies. And I watch the preachers and priests going about their business as if nothing's happened!'" 19 God, have you said your final No to Judah? Can you simply not stand Zion any longer? If not, why have you treated us like this, beaten us nearly to death? We hoped for peace - nothing good came from it; We looked for healing - and got kicked in the stomach. 20 We admit, O God, how bad we've lived, and our ancestors, how bad they were. We've sinned, they've sinned, we've all sinned against you! 21 Your reputation is at stake! Don't quit on us! Don't walk out and abandon your glorious Temple! Remember your covenant. Don't break faith with us! 22 Can the no-gods of the godless nations cause rain? Can the sky water the earth by itself? You're the one, O God, who does this. So you're the one for whom we wait. You made it all, you do it all.
11 I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God's plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. 2 I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours!
3 Every time I say your name in prayer - which is practically all the time - I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. 4 I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion. 5 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith - and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you!
6 And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed - keep that ablaze! 7 God doesn't want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible. 8 So don't be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, 9 who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. 10 But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus. 11 This is the Message I've been set apart to proclaim as preacher, emissary, and teacher. 12 It's also the cause of all this trouble I'm in. But I have no regrets. I couldn't be more sure of my ground - the One I've trusted in can take care of what he's trusted me to do right to the end. 13 So keep at your work, this faith and love rooted in Christ, exactly as I set it out for you. It's as sound as the day you first heard it from me. 14 Guard this precious thing placed in your custody by the Holy Spirit who works in us.
15 I'm sure you know by now that everyone in the province of Asia deserted me, even Phygelus and Hermogenes. 16 But God bless Onesiphorus and his family! Many's the time I've been refreshed in that house. And he wasn't embarrassed a bit that I was in jail. 17 The first thing he did when he got to Rome was look me up. 18 May God on the Last Day treat him as well as he treated me. And then there was all the help he provided in Ephesus - but you know that better than I.
