life of a prophet

Jeremiah 26:1-9;Psalm 69 Lord, in your great love, answer me;Matthew 13:54-58

The words spoken to Jeremiah, "Whatever I command you, tell them, and omit nothing. Perhaps they will listen and turn back, each from his evil way..."

What was the people's response to the words of Jeremiah, ""you must be put to death!"

The life of the prophet was never a life of luxury. The intimacy they had with God was often at a price. In order to bear the burden of such intimacy and such closeness with God they often forfeited close ties with others, often forfeited a life of "normalcy."

How often in our life we long for closeness with God; we all want spiritual consolation and that "feeling" of closeness that lingers but how many of us want to pay the price of admission into that closeness. How many of us are sincere and genuine in our willingness to surrender a life of "normalcy" for love of God and his love for his people.

Intimacy with God is free but it is not cheap. Grace, the gift of God himself, is free but it to is not cheap. We, in our modern spiritual search, have unfortunately cheapen grace, cheapen the experience of God's closeness, cheapen that which was once so sacred and made it commercialized.

Today, every one wants a spiritual life that you can go to local dollar store and pick up like an extra pack of batteries or gallon of milk. We treat retreats and stuff like markets where everything is at our finger tips. Life changing experiences seem to be a dime a dozen. We have all forgotten that anything worthy having comes at a price. We all fail to follow through, we all lack the resolve of the prophet who risk his life for the taste of God.

We must surrender our life of normalcy. The prophets hold to our eye the truth of just how much intimacy with God cost. He gives us his life but he takes our life with him.

We can no longer cheapen spiritual consolation. It isn't something to gain by a mere weekend or a few days, rather it is a journey of a life time where day in and day out we speak those words of God omitting nothing and we stand erect, we stand firm, and let the people seek our life and cry for our death because in the end the closeness and intimacy of God has already killed us anyway, in that closeness we have died to self and live for him alone.


In the end we are not responsible for people's willingness to listen but we are responsible for speaking the words. Perhaps they will listen but let us never say "perhaps" we will speak. Speak we must and what will follow will follow.

The life of prophet is our baptismal gift from God himself.