<<ABOUT REV. DR LISSA M. WRAY BEAL>>
Transitions can be positive: the beginning of a new school year. A wedding. A long-desired career change. But transitions can be negative—the ones we hope never come our way; the terrifying; those over which we have no control and from which there seems no escape. Perhaps it is an unwanted transition to a care home. Or singleness after a marriage goes south. Or the death of a child. Is there any word from God to accompany us through these transitions into darkness?
Recently, friends fled their country, which had descended into war, leaving behind home, livelihoods, and hopes of what life would be. We encounter a similar transition in the book of Jeremiah as God’s covenant people—after many years of disregarding prophetic warnings—are attacked by Babylon, defeated, and exiled. Life as they knew it came to an end: houses and livelihoods lost. Family members dead by sword or famine. The temple destroyed. Their identity lost. Fear that God had abandoned them. Those few left in the land had it little better as they struggled to reestablish amidst lament, exhaustion, and famine.
Through this transition into darkness, God spoke to his nation, and to individuals within that nation. What might those ancient words speak to God’s people today as we accompany those walking into darkness—or if our own lives move into darkness?
Jeremiah
Jeremiah is called to speak to a nation that will not listen. God makes it clear the prophet is in for a rough ride. There will be national disaster at the hands of a mysterious and terrifying northern foe (1:14–15). Jeremiah’s own people will fight against him (1:19) and we see some of his woes throughout the book (11:18–19; 20:1–2; 37:1–38:28). He’ll need to be as tough as a fortified city.
Yet besides a commission to a daunting task, God gives reassurance: the prophet will not be overcome. God will be “with you, to deliver you” (1:19). This same word of comfort will return to encourage him in one of his darkest times (15:18–21). Jeremiah would not be delivered out of the terrifying circumstances, but even before the journey began, God promised his presence and protection through those circumstances.
Ebed-melech
Ebed-melech was a foreign court official who saved Jeremiah from certain death after the prophet’s imprisonment in a muddy cistern (38:6–13). Only later do we learn Ebed-melech risked this intervention because he trusted Israel’s God (39:18). When Jeremiah was rescued, the account records no words between prophet and rescuer. Later, following the chilling account of the city’s fall (39:1–10) we read God’s promise to Ebed-melech (39:15–18). Even as the enemy with brutal efficiency disposed of Jerusalem’s buildings (by burning) and people (by death or deportation), Ebed-melech is promised he will escape with his life. God will rescue him. Interestingly, the word comes before the city fell—perhaps at the conclusion of the rescue operation—so that, as Israel’s world crashed and burned, Ebed-melech had a word of hope to hold him through the dark days of transition.
Baruch
Baruch son of Neriah, was Jeremiah’s scribe who helped communicate the prophetic word (chs. 32, 36). With Jeremiah, he lived through the city’s siege and escaped deportation only to eke out life in a devastated land populated by the poor and fractured by power struggles. Ultimately, both Baruch and Jeremiah were forcibly removed by a remnant that fled to Egypt, against God’s command.
However, 19 years before these events, God had given Baruch a word of hope (ch. 45). That word contained a stark reminder that God’s word of judgment against the nation would certainly be accomplished as prophesied. It also promised Baruch that he would live and survive the time of judgment. In the years between this promise (given in 605 B.C.) and the city’s fall (in 586 B.C.), and as Baruch saw the word of judgment come to pass, might he not have remembered the word of promise and trust that it, too, would come to pass? As darkness closed upon Jerusalem, would he have found comfort in the sureness of God’s word to him?
The nation
Jeremiah, Ebed-melech, and Baruch each received a word that promised God’s presence and sustaining power through the dark transition of national judgment and exile. Of course, there were other individuals who loved God and who walked through the dark transition of exile but received no personal word of hope. But for them—indeed the whole nation—God did provide a powerful word of hope. It also comes before judgment overtakes them.
Amidst repeated messages of coming devastation, Jeremiah 30–33 is a surprising counterpoint. It is often called the Book of Comfort, for it overflows with words of restoration and future hope. Restoration of people to their God. Restoration of people to the land, city, and temple. The heart of the Book of Comfort presents a promise of a renewed and unbreakable covenant—a New Covenant—that would redeem God’s people out of exile, set God’s instruction within their hearts, and forgive their sins. In the New Covenant the intimate relationship of Israel to its God would be restored and deepened (31:31–34).
Not every faithful individual in the book of Jeremiah received a personal word of hope. But the Book of Comfort and its New Covenant was a promise made to all Israel. Its fulfilment began, in part, with the nation’s return to its land in 539 B.C. But its fulness was affected much later.
At a simple table of bread and wine, Christ proclaimed, “This is my blood of the New Covenant, shed for you and for many.” After that supper, this One entered his own dark transition—the exile of death—so as to conquer that terrifying foe. Returning from exile, Christ by his Spirit promised to be with all his people. Not only does he redeem us from our dark exile in the land of sin and death, he goes with us—and stays with us—whenever we enter those transitions we dread. He knows that territory; he is not afraid of it, and it is not dark to him.
If we ever find our lives in transition into dark territory, we can take comfort. God promised his presence and sustaining power to Jeremiah, Ebed-melech, Baruch, and his own nation. He did so even before they entered their dark transition. The living and enduring words of Scripture speak the truth of their experience of God’s character to us today. Even more, we live in the New Covenant, knowing that Christ, the Word, has broken the power of all darkness.
These truths go with us, should we ever transition into darkness. We need not be afraid there, for Christ is with us and will not leave. His word speaks of God’s good presence and power, and his Spirit walks with us through any valley of shadow.
