Jeremiah 8:20 -- On Seasons and Salvation

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me.
Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"
Jeremiah 8:20


I was reading today and there was a lot of negative stuff. Earlier in this chapter there was "When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me" (verse 18), and earlier I read in Psalms "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked" (Psalms 58:10), which sounded a little too bloodthirsty for me, so I wasn't going to write about it. But you know, then I started reading this other part about the injustice and harm and hurt in the world.

We know from Lehi's dream if nowhere else that darkness and storms are going to come for all of us, and that the only way through is to hold to the rod. Good actions and faith don't prevent us from experiencing life or learning the things that we sometimes need to learn "by sad experience" (D&C 121:39). Life happens, and hard things are going to come our way. There isn't a way around those times. But going back to Psalms, the verse after says "So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." ... Still not a fan of bloodthirstiness, but if we look at it from the perspective of the Jeremiah selection above, there is a roaring emptiness where justice should be throughout a lot of history, and those who were slaughtered by evil or who have witnessed that slaughter... how can they not rejoice when that hole is filled, and things are made right? It isn't bloodthirst... just thirst for justice. God knows the difference, and will deal with all as mercifully as possible in the end.

Today, let's remember that if the season is over and we aren't saved, there yet remains a time to come when God *will* save us, and make everything right, and judge us all. Wickedness and "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalms 30:5). The reason that a day in God's courts is better than a thousand elsewhere is that the tents of wickedness (Psalms 84:10) are full of injustice and casual cruelty, even when they are not much, much worse. God is the balm and the physician that will heal us all. As we trust in his plan and in his timing, eventually all will be made right. Which means that we also need to be on the right side, because even though we can't always see it in our lives now, justice is coming.