Dear friends, it will be so good to see you tomorrow.  I listened to the recording from last week and there was a lot of talk about getting back to normal.  I appreciate the thoughts expressed.  Normal is a relative concept and not one we should necessarily embrace.  Yet I am very much looking forward to something closer to normal after my marathon work session the past two weeks.  Getting to be with you all is a great start!

I don’t have a lot of news this week.  Since I didn’t get to copy the prayer requests until Thursday, I shared what I had learned since they were made there.  Tim is till in pain but getting better.  Priscilla won’t have to have surgery but will need another month of recovery.  I checked on some others but haven’t connected with them yet.  Keep Ruth in your prayers.  Also remember Debra as she recovers.

This morning I was reading from the book of Jeremiah and came across one of those stories that always caught my attention.  I can’t say why exactly.  God was always having the  prophets do strange things for the purposes of illustration.  Compared to some of the others, this one is rather uninteresting.  At Yahweh’s command, Jeremiah invites a nomadic family into a room at the temple and serves them wine.  They won’t drink it because an ancestor from 200 years ago told them not to.  God then speaks through Jeremiah, using this as an example of how the land of Judah should be listening to Him.  But there are layers to this message that I had not seen before, and a more than one good lesson for us.

Have you ever wondered, “Why am I doing this?”  It’s not a bad question to ask.  Sometimes the answer can help us decide whether we should keep on doing it.  I’ll bet this family, the Rechabites, wondered that from time to time.  It wasn’t just that they couldn’t drink wine.  They were not supposed to build houses either, or plant seeds.  In other words, they were to do nothing that would tie them to one place.  There was nothing legally binding about these commands.  It would not have violated the law to do any of these things.  They did them because their father said to.  There is a commandment they were keeping, the one to honor your parents.  Their faithfulness resulted in honor from God and stood out as an example to the nation.

If you know that what you are doing is right, don’t give up!  Others may think it’s silly.  Sometimes you may wonder at it yourself, but if you stand firm, you will stand out.  This account is found in Jeremiah 35.  We will only read starting from verse 12 tomorrow, but it will help if you read the whole chapter beforehand.

See you there!

Love y’all!

Larry