A Compelling Call

An introduction to Jeremiah, modified from The Message:

Imagine there was one guy on board the Titanic with sonar equipment trying to get the captain and crew to believe there was an iceberg ahead.  They’d never heard of sonar and thought he was nuts.  That guy was Jeremiah, and the Titanic was his country.

Jeremiah’s troubled life spanned one of the most troublesome periods in Hebrew history, the decades leading up to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, followed by the Babylonian exile.  Everything that could do wrong did go wrong.  And Jeremiah was in the middle of all of it, sticking it out, praying and preaching, suffering and striving, writing and believing.  He lived through crushing storms of hostility and furies of bitter doubt.  Every muscle in his body was stretched to the limit by fatigue; every though in his mind was subjected to questioning; every feeling…