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.”
In this verse, God is talking to Himself.
Read it again and notice its shape: "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?" God is thinking out loud. He is working through a decision in the open, and the difficulty is real, because this nation has been unfaithful to Him in the most shameful way the chapter can describe. So the question is a real one: how can 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."
God does not stay silent and leave people guessing at His mood. Jeremiah keeps letting us hear Him think. And what we hear is not the list of wrongs people expect. He is planning an inheritance for them, "a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations," the finest land among all the nations. At the end of His thinking, what He wants is more than obedience. He wants to be called Father by children who stay with Him.
Then comes the very next verse: "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me." So the plan does not fail because the gift was too small. It fails because the people walked away from the One who was offering it.
So ask yourself what you assume God is holding back from you. Then do not rush to answer. Put this down for a moment and sit with what you have just heard: God, thinking out loud about His people, planning good for them, and longing to be called Father. Say nothing for a while. Then say that one word to Him, and stay.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 284 is Seedtime and Harvest (Genesis 8:22).