Jeremiah and My Generation

Reading in Jeremiah 1 and 2, I am saddened to be reminded of the parallels between the Israelites/the people of Judah and their pursuit of other gods, and my generation and our almost animal-like, frenzied search for pleasure, happiness, and anything that feels good. You see, I am at the very oldest end of the generation that includes all of the students from elementary school through college. 1985 is, if you can divide generations numerically, the border year.

Jer. 2:33 says, "How skilled you are at pursuing love! Even the worst of women can learn from your ways." I watch as daily my students chase unthinkingly after any love, any pleasure they can find, at the expense of friendships, school, family relationships, health, and so on.

It is as if this generation has lost its center. As though the elements of an individual's life are in orbit, but there is not one central body around which everything orbits. Everything is dependent on something else, yet everything is not dependent on/anchored to a constant. So, when life gets out of control, when what temporary and unreliable balance that was there is lost, the individual adds something else, something new or something tried before and discarded, to counterbalance instead of reordering the items so they are centered and cannot spin out of control.

Jer. 2:13-14 - "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

We are abandoning God as the center for a solution that doesn't work!