Daily Manna · Day 284 · October 11
A Pleasant Land
“But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.”
This verse is God talking to himself.
Read it again and notice the shape of it. But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land. It is a deliberation spoken aloud, a decision being worked through in the open, and the difficulty in it is real. This is a nation that has been unfaithful in the most humiliating way the chapter can describe, and the question is not rhetorical: how does he do this. Then, in the same verse, he decides. And I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.
He is not a figure who says nothing while people speculate about his mood. Jeremiah keeps letting us hear him think, and what comes out is not the tally people expect. He is planning an inheritance, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations, better than what the great powers held. What he wants at the end of the deliberation is not compliance. It is to be called Father by people who stay.
And then the next verse. Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me. The plan does not fail because the gift was too small.
So ask what you assume he is holding back from you. Then do not answer it. Put this down and sit with the fact that you have just heard him thinking, and say nothing for a while.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 284 is Seedtime and Harvest (Genesis 8:22).