Practical Jeremiah

Jeremiah, during these weeks, was shut up in prison. He had been accused of collaboration with the enemy, a false charge, but in the war hysteria it stuck. He was an unpopular figure at best, and so, as far as the people were concerned , prison was not an inappropriate place for him. In this prison -we must imagine a kind of loose confinement in the palace court where he was openly visible and had access to visitors - Jeremiah did what at the time appeared absolutely crazy; he bought a filed for seventeen dollars.

It was crazy beacuse at the very moemnt that he was buying it, the Babylonian armies were camping on it. He himself was in prison with no prospects for getting out. The enemy was pounding the city walls and about to take the peoploe off to exile. At that moment Jeremiah bought a field on which he would never plant an olvine tree... a fiend that in all probability he would never see.

Why did he do it? For the most practical of reasons: he did it because he was convinced that the troubles everyone was experienceing were at that very moment being used by God in what would eventually turn out to be the salvation of that land. The essential reality for Jeremiah was not thaht the Babylonians were camped on that field in Anathoth...but that God was using that ground to fulfill his promises.

- Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best by Eugene H.Peterson