Day 3 | Remain faithful and undistracted

Reflection

Jeremiah is a realist. He accepts that the Babylonians around God’s exiled people will be trying to lead them astray into alternative, idolatrous spiritualities.

He knows they’ll be persuasive, too.

If you cast your mind back to yesterday’s reading, you’ll remember the first thing Jeremiah instructs the exiles to do is seek the shalom of the place they find themselves.

This necessitates being an active, involved member of the local community. But being an active member of the local community can sometimes have unintended consequences.

The process of ‘discipleship’ includes becoming more like something. Everybody, Christian or not, is discipled by something or someone.

As followers of Christ, we can state clearly on Sunday that we want to be discipled by Jesus, to become more like him. However, on Monday morning, our actions at work, with our friends, and even with our families indicate we're being discipled by something else. We are becoming more like the world around us and, consequently, less like Christ.

But the call to be in the world and working for the shalom of the places we're in endures. So how do we deal with this tension? Over the remainder of our journey through Lent, we'll seek to answer this question.

Jeremiah instructs the exiles to remain faithful to God, even amidst insistent and persuasive individuals trying to steer them in a different direction.

In John 15, Jesus himself will later describe this as, ‘being in the world, but not of the world’.

When the people of God, both 2,500 years ago and today, insert themselves as agents of shalom into their local communities, they know they do valuable work – but are not to lose sight of the one in whose name they do that work.

Father, help us to stay faithful to you as we participate in seeking the shalom of the world around us.