“Ah, Lord God! Surely You have greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘You shall have peace,’ whereas the sword reaches to the heart” (Jer 4:10).
Jeremiah would not be the last one to fail to reconcile God’s promises with his reading of present circumstances. Martin Luther wrote, “At one time I was sorely vexed and tried by my own sinfulness, by the wickedness of the world, and by the dangers which beset the church. One morning I saw my wife dressed in mourning. Surprised, I asked her who had died. She replied: ‘Don’t you know?…God in heaven is dead.’…I said to her, ‘How can you talk such nonsense, Katie? How can God die? He is immortal.’… ‘Is that really true?’ she asked. ‘Of course,’ I said, still not perceiving what she was aiming at. ‘How can you doubt it?’…‘And yet,’ she said, ‘Though you do not doubt that, you are still so hopeless and discouraged?’ ” Luther adds, “Then I observed what a wise woman my wife was, and mastered my sadness.”