Jeremiah 14:7-12, 19-22

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. 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? 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 without a leg to stand on. 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.” GOD said to me, “Don’t pray that everything will turn out all right for this people. 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.”

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. We admit, O GOD, how badly we’ve lived, and our ancestors, how bad they were. We’ve sinned, they’ve sinned, we’ve all sinned against you! 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! 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.