We become like the people that we enjoy. On the good side, “iron sharpens iron,” (Proverbs 27:17). On the negative side, “bad company corrupts good character,” (I Corinthians 15:33). Any who have children see this in the lives of their kids. Little kids especially want to be like their parents – they wear our shoes, they want to be with us, they sometimes even say something really funny and we realize that it is the same thing we would say, but it sounds funny coming out of such a little person. We become like the people we enjoy.I have been thinking about this idea this week as I have been reading Jeremiah. Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet. When I have read Jeremiah in the past, I always thought of it from the perspective of the people and the judgment that was coming. I thought things like: “They were evil,” “they deserved punishment,” “God continues to offer grace for genuine change of heart,” “Jeremiah has a tough job,” etc. All of these thoughts are true. But this time, I have found myself with a slightly different perspective. It is not a perspective that is contradictory, but just a different vantage point. I have been thinking about this from the perspective of what God felt. Not just what He thought or what He was doing, but how he felt. Here were people who He created to enjoy a relationship with Him and they were betraying Him. In the second chapter, God says, “Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.” Wow, what must that have felt like…nations who worship false gods do not change their gods, yet the nation dedicated to the true God turns from Him. For His grace, they gave him idolatry which He compares to adultery.
No wonder Jeremiah was the weeping prophet. If Jeremiah was a person who began to take on God’s values, we would expect to see expressed through him some of what God was feeling. We become like the people we enjoy.
I wonder sometimes if we as Christians are much different from our counterparts in false religions. Yes, we have a different set of truth claims, but what do we do with them? Are our prayers much different? Are our concerns much different? Or have we settled for religion in place of relationship?
The answer of course is simply to enjoy Him more. I want to be the kind of person who thinks about things and feels things the way that God thinks about them and feels them. By His grace, I find Him moving me in that direction. Gracias a Dios!
