Jeremiah 31:7-9
Year B
I arrived in Aberdeen, Scotland, retrieved my luggage, and waited for the person from the college who was supposed to pick me up. I waited and I waited and I waited. It was about an hour later when I realized my mistake. I had misread the time of my arrival in Aberdeen due to Scotland’s use of military or 24-hour time. So, if my ride had come to get me, she had left the airport long ago. I was alone, 16 hours into my travel, and in a foreign country. I was not thinking clearly due to fatigue and unfamiliar with the customs or how to arrange my own transportation. It was the most alone and unwelcome I think I have ever felt.
Perhaps you know the feeling. Maybe it was a time you took a wrong turn on a trip and became utterly lost. Maybe it was when you sat for the first time in a new class in a new school and didn’t know a soul. Maybe it was when your mom or your dad or your husband or your wife walked out the door carrying a suitcase and never came back. Maybe it was when you sat in an exam room wondering when the doctor would come back with your test results. Maybe it was when you stood because you couldn’t sit any longer, in a hospital waiting room while someone you loved underwent surgery. Maybe it was when you walked into your house three days after the funeral of your spouse, your family and friends had gone home, and you realized there was no one there to greet you.
Or perhaps you are busy all day with children, longing for even one word of adult conversation. Perhaps you check social media a hundred times a day hoping to see something to make you smile but end up feeling more alone despite your thousands of “friends.” Maybe your children are teenagers, and they don’t talk to you much anymore. You don’t seem to get together with other parents anymore either. Or maybe you are a teenager, and you know the other side of that story — everyone else at school seems happy, but you’re not. Bullies used to have to insult you to your face. Now texts and posts flood your account 24 hours a day. You can’t tell mom and dad because they are so busy, and they won’t understand.
Yes, loneliness is pervasive in our world today. But before we dwell there too long, we need to hear some good news.
God welcomes you. Let me say it again. You are welcomed and embraced and loved by a God who will never leave you alone. Emmanuel, God with us: that is who our God is. We are never completely alone. We may feel alone and abandoned and uncared for and unloved, but we are not. No matter what you have done, where you have been, or what you have experienced God welcomes you and loves you. We are always in the presence and warmth and strength and love and care of God who has stretched out his arms on a cross to embrace us. We are not alone. By God’s grace, we belong to God who loves us — warts and sins and all.
That is what this Scripture text from Jeremiah is all about. The people of Israel have been in exile in Babylon. They are far from home. They felt abandoned and alone. But, finally, through the prophet, God declares:
Sing aloud with gladness …
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,
and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame,
those with child and those in labor, together;
a great company, they shall return here.
With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble.
Yes, God declares that God is going to bring all the children home. Not because they are strong enough or smart enough or accomplished enough. Not because they have finally figured out life or have left their struggles behind. From the farthest parts of the earth, God will gather the blind and the lame, those carrying a child and those in labor, those weeping and those who stumble. God is calling all the children home.
Proclaim that good news this week. There is a place for you. You are loved and welcome here. You need not be alone.
Questions for reflection
- What is the moment or time when you felt most alone? What emotions or memories does recalling that moment lift up for you?
- How do you know when you are “home”? What emotions or memories does recalling “home” lift up for you?
- How might your church extend the kind of welcome and homecoming envisioned by Jeremiah? What barriers are preventing you from calling all God’s children home?
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