Jeremiah 17:14 Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed;
save me and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise.

The passage from verse five on is very rich, with many beautiful and justly famous verses, but it is a little surprising that it is in Jeremiah. It seems more appropriate to Proverbs, or perhaps Psalms. We don’t often think of Jeremiah as a poet! However, he was certainly a major prophet, and we forget how much prophecy was intertwined with poetry and even music in Old Testament days. All of that aside, this is certainly a beautiful testimony of dependence on God. Advances in science and medicine are things to be grateful for, but we run the risk of depending on those things instead of on the One who made them possible. It is not wrong to go to the doctor, or, for that matter, to drive a car or use a computer or smart phone, but we must remember the God who not only makes all those things possible, He created every atom in our bodies, and apart from His will, nothing would even exist. That understanding is fundamental to the “fear of the Lord” that the Bible talks about so much. Sadly, that’s precisely what people today seem to have lost. Human achievement has come so far, we think we don’t need God! It’s not at all that we aren’t to recognize and appreciate all the things God enables us and others to do, but if we forget the Source of it all, it becomes completely empty. After all “You can’t take it with you” applies to all of that, not just financial wealth. There is peace and liberty in the true fear of the Lord, in recognizing that we can do nothing completely on our own, but there is no limit to what He can do through us.

This is an understanding that I have grown in over the years. I was mired in pride for too many years, having been given a high IQ and a variety of other abilities. I didn’t earn any of those myself! What I have done with them is my responsibility, and I will have to answer to God for it all, but it has been very liberating indeed to realize, on an ever deeper level, that absolutely everything comes from God, and I am only given the privilege of being the expression of it. I enjoy technology, and I am excited to see the advances in space flight and countless other fields, but I know that they will seem like stone-age tools when I am liberated from my current body. Likewise, I am grateful for the medical care I receive, but know that all of that will be unnecessary when I am resurrected. Right now, I am to seek God for what He wants me to do with what I have at hand, from physical health on to material goods and human interactions, knowing that it is all from Him and depends on Him, that I may be a good steward in His eyes.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for how You have grown me over the years. Thank You for the awareness that I still have plenty of room to grow! May I receive each lesson You give me with gratitude, so that every part of my life may be pleasing to You, for Your glory alone. Thank You. Praise God!