Wash day...again

Well, you just never know what you will run across in reading through the Bible.

I am currently in Jeremiah, which is always rather deep and discouraging and challenging.

However, yesterday’s portion just struck me again at how perplexing portions of Scripture can be.

I was in Jeremiah 13 and in the translation I am reading, it straight up said that God told the prophet to go buy a new pair of underwear and put it on.

Underwear.

Literally the word in my reading.

I am a picture person, as you know, so I just pictured this prophet going and buying a pair of men’s underwear. And whatever fashions and fabrics were around at the time of his life, basically there is only so many ways you can style this particular piece of clothing.

So after he puts it on, God tells him to take it off and go bury it in a hill of dirt somewhere.

After a while, God tells him to go back and dig it up and of course the garment is completely ruined from dirt, rain, bugs, whatever else made up the place where it lay for a length of time.

As I was reading, I just was taken with how strange all of this must have been for Jeremiah, for his friends and family, the neighbors and people he went to church with.

I also was deeply wondering what on earth the point of it is.

Remember this is not my first read-through of Jeremiah. I have done the annual read through a number of times, but I have to say this was the first time all of this really had my curiosity piqued.

Reading further, God told Jeremiah to take the ruined underwear to the people and show it to them and tell them that this was how He viewed their pride.

Keep in mind that every time I read the word underwear, I cringed slightly with the mental image of a garment that was often referred to in past history as your “unmentionables.”

I found myself praying for understanding of how on earth God would decide to use men’s underwear as a symbol for pride and then it hit me.

We really probably have never felt proud of our underwear.

We just buy what’s comfortable and affordable and we wear it and wear it out and pitch it and buy some more.

It’s just something we take for granted. It’s useful but we don’t give it a lot of thought.

And I felt like God was saying when I have pride in me about whatever, He looks at that and sees a pair of ruined underwear.

It’s not worthy of Him.

It brings no honor or glory to Him or to His Kingdom or to anyone really.

It is something no one needs to see.

Pride is a sneaky sin.

It hides in places that look like one thing but are really another.

This passage of Jeremiah has set me pondering where it is hiding in my life, buried in some dirt pile.

I will be asking for light to be shed on my thoughts and intentions of my heart in the days to come.

Apparently it is laundry time again <3

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