Lent - His Love EnduresSample

Tradition is a beautiful thing. Whether it’s a cultural dance like the Greek Zorba or clothing or the way stories are told and passed down from generation to generation.

In Jeremiah 30, we read about another kind of communal loyalty to tradition. Judah thought they’d never see their own ancestral land again. God, however, had different plans, and a new covenant: “I will restore them to the land I gave to their ancestors and they will possess it” (Jeremiah 30:3).

When I think of God’s people returning home, I can’t help but picture the reunion in the same style of traditional celebration —bright colours, hooping and hollering, beaming with pride and excitement, as they “come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion… radiant with joy” (Jeremiah 31:12). Except this time, it’s God who is cheering on His children. It is He who is most excited to claim victory and freedom for His beloved and see them back home where they belong. Just as the Italians spent all year preparing for Il Palio, I like to picture God orchestrating the new covenant, anticipating radiant shouts of joy, long before His people returned home.

As we’ve journeyed through the book of Jeremiah, there have been warnings about the future and mountain-top moments of returning-home joy. But at the heart of this book and this Lenten season of remembrance and repentance is this: God can be trusted to hold both sorrow and joy, and He is faithful through it all. Thanks be to Him.