Don't fall into 'good old days' thinking
Jeremiah 31:27-34
JOE MILLER JR

It is very easy to fall into "the good old days" or "I remember when" traps. You have probably been trapped yourself. Have you ever said, "I remember when Newton had three car dealers?" Or, "I remember when you could trust a man at his word, and we did not need any papers."

"I remember when you could leave your front door unlocked and the keys in the ignition of the truck." As we get older, we realize that we have more years behind us and fewer in front of us, and we tend to let nostalgia rule our lives.

The people to whom Jeremiah is prophesying have good reasons to cling to the "good old days." Their country and capital city Jerusalem have been totally destroyed by the Babylonian Army. Friends and families have been slaughtered, they have been starved during a long siege, and the upper crust of society has been carried off into captivity to a strange land. The good life that once was… is no more.

Jeremiah lifts them up with an oracle of the future. "In those days" everything that is wrong will be recreated. The land will be repopulated with people and animal. But this will not be a return to the "good old days." These days will be even better.

The old covenant that was broken by their ancestors will not be reinstituted; rather it will be replaced with a new and better covenant. God will institute (notice that God always makes the first move) a covenant that will be written on our hearts.

If you remember Charlton Heston playing Moses in the Ten Commandments, you remember the dramatic event when he received the commandments from God. Shortly after receiving the tablets Moses threw them down and broke the tablets in a fit of anger at the disloyal behavior of the people. Ever since he literally broke the tablets, we have been breaking the law and the covenants themselves.

The new and improved covenant will not be written on stone but on the hearts of His people. God will forgive our sin and forget it. Just imagine that you went to heaven and St. Peter looked through the big book of recorded sin and found your page blank. God forgets!

But how will we keep from breaking the covenant again? When the covenant is written on our hearts, we are transformed into a new being. Not only is the slate of sin wiped clean, but we are transformed into God's people and empowered to love Him and remain true to the covenant.

There is only one requirement to receive this covenant… we have to let Him write on our hearts. Can we do that? If so, the future will better than the "good old days" ever were or even how we imagined them. Email me with your comments at newtonumc@valornet.com.

Joe Miller Jr. is pastor at First United Methodist Church in Newton.