An Earthenware Vessel

While we were at family camp last week, Israel bombed Iran, and I sprained my ankle.

Forty-five people went with us to camp, and it was a wild and woolly week full of Jesus, fellowship, and fun. We were worshiping together around a campfire when a friend leaned over and showed me her phone screen. Her husband had texted, “Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities!”

After spraining my ankle during a high-intensity basketball game, I laid on my cot and read my daily Bible reading. It was from the book of Jeremiah. It was the part where Jeremiah’s cousin comes and tries to sell him some land when conquest seems imminent.

The Lord directed Jeremiah to buy the land, seal the deed, and store it in an earthenware vessel so that it would last for a long time. Jeremiah was so confused. For so many years, he had prophesied that the land would be given to the Chaldeans. Why bother to buy land or care about the land deed if no Israelite would be owning the land ever again?

The Lord explained: “I will gather [My people] from all the countries to which I drove them…I will bring them back to this place and I will make them dwell in safety.”

The Lord had long-term plans for the land that Jeremiah had purchased. He still has plans for that land today. An earthenware vessel doesn’t seem very long lasting, but that’s what He directed Jeremiah to preserve the land deed in.

At camp, one of the pastors shared his testimony of military service during the Vietnam War. He had not been a Christian then, but he read Psalm 139 and told about God’s faithful protection even when he had not yet trusted Christ.

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Watching newsreels of bombings while I nursed my sore ankle reinforced the truth of my own mortality. We are all just earthenware vessels, susceptible to injury and death.

However, the Lord has redeemed those of us who have trusted Christ. We might have once been land Satan had conquered, but the Lord has redeemed us. He holds the deed, having given us His Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the eternal life He has promised.

He brought His people back to the Promised Land to dwell in safety. He will bring us safely home to dwell with Him in eternity. Jeremiah’s land purchase wasn’t a waste and neither was Christ’s purchase of us.

My ankle will heal. There will be an end to this war between Israel and Iran. What lasts forever is the purchase that Christ has made with His great power and His outstretched arm and our voices raised together, worshiping Him, already celebrating His eternal redemption and His plan fulfilled. 

For now, we keep it, stored safely in these earthenware vessels.