Figs
Day 370, Saturday, Aug. 16
Jeremiah Chapters 24 and 25
In all the language of doom and destruction it’s easy to miss an important point—God’s judgment cuts both ways.
The doom and destruction is for those who have turned away from God; for those who have been their victims, God promises good things.
In today’s reading that duality is seen as an image of two baskets of figs—good figs and bad figs.
For the good figs—the people sent into exile in Babylon—“My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.”
The bad figs that will be punished are the king, his officials and cronies.
While the king of Judah is portrayed as an enemy of God, the foreign king, Nebuchadnezzar, is referred to as “my servant”—a case where someone who is not one of God’s people is seen as doing God’s work.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Saturday meditation

Job 21:27-34
“I know full well what you are thinking, the schemes by which you would wrong me. You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great, the tents where the wicked lived?’ Have you never questioned those who travel? Have you paid no regard to their accounts—that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity, that they are delivered from the day of wrath? Who denounces their conduct to their face? Who repays them for what they have done? They are carried to the grave, and watch is kept over their tombs. The soil in the valley is sweet to them; everyone follows after them, and a countless throng goes before them.
“So how can you console me with your nonsense? Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood!”

Prayer focus
Lord, in your judgment may we always be on the side of faithfulness, not rebellion.