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We have been studying three of the major covenants from the Jewish scriptures in the last several weeks: Noah, Abraham and Moses. This week, there are two different sets of readings in the lectionary. Once I read the Jeremiah passage, I thought it appropriate to end on the promise of future covenant as it not only related to the time of Jeremiah but to our own Journey class.
When I was preparing to come to Richmond for seminary, a retired pastor who was a member of my ordination council, counseled me on remembering that "the best is yet to come." I must admit that after working in a number of intensive cares at two different hospitals the view of the future (growing older) was not what I what have initially referred to as the "best" to come. Being fairly older than the average seminary attendee, one can look back with some trepidation on what might have been done better in the past. But the past is just that: past. Time to move forward. For me, God is forgiving of the past and busy establishing the future by being involved today.
How does the passage below speak to you where you are in your covenant with God and with others?
Jeremiah 31:31-34
31:31 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
31:32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD.
31:33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
31:34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
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