Jeremiah's 2020 Window: Refusing to Eat the Old Corn

The nobles send servants to get water, but all the wells are dry...The ground is parched and cracked for lack of rain.               Jeremiah 14:3-4

Why has 2020 brought exhaustion and despair to a new unprecedented level? Let's consider:

Two things the Bible states are sure for men if they obey God—bread and water (see Isaiah 33:16); that is all God has promised us. Look over the history of civilizations and you will find every disaster has come by taking more. 

A spiritual application may be made along this line—“a famine . . . of hearing the words of the Lord” strikes every soul that has departed from the living God and dwelt by pleasant spiritual experiences—God’s word dead to you, no inspiration about it; prayer dead, spiritual communion dead, you wait and long and pray and nothing happens, everything languishing and dying. 

You will find if sin has not been the cause, there has been a selfish glutting of your soul on experiences instead of going on to know God Who gave you the experiences. 

We refuse to eat the old corn of the land, we prefer manna—that God should always do some exceptional thing for us. 

Spiritual famine and dearth, if it does not start from sin, starts from being a spiritual glutton, dwelling entirely on the experience that God has given us instead of seeing that the experience is but the gateway to the life. 

Life is the thing we live, experience is the gateway to new phases of life, and if we remain at the gate always we shall die of starvation.

Adapted from Oswald Chambers' Notes on Jeremiah