Thursday, March 30, 2017

Jeremiah 7:5-7 -- On Being Thorough and Avoiding Harm

"For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;
If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:
Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever."
Jeremiah 7:5-7


I like the idea that we need to do some things thoroughly, like amending our ways.  Glossing over things or just doing them halfway isn't really a good approach to the gospel, to self-improvement, or to our interactions with others. :)

I also really, really like God specifying that we are doing these bad things "to [our] hurt."  Our rebellions aren't harming God or confounding his plans.  They sometimes only hurt us, but because God cares about us, he wants us to stop harming ourselves and to learn and to grow up.  He is offering to teach us how to avoid choosing self-implosion.  Even more, when our actions harm others as well, he can help us learn to heal instead.

Today, let's think about how to be a little bit more thorough in the good things that we do, and how to avoid harming others by eliminating some of the bad from our lives.

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