Buying a Field
There is a Bible on my nightstand I read from every night just before I go to sleep. It is a King James Study Bible that my oldest son gave me for a gift several years ago. The hardcover Bible is now well worn. Many times when I pick it up, it opens straight to Jeremiah 32. I suppose that is just a place the worn binding automatically opens to. My eyes usually go straight to a passage of scripture on that same page time and time again. The passage is titled "Jeremiah Buys a Field." I have read it and read it and wondered is there a very specific thing God wants me to see in the passage, other than what I have already seen.
I read the whole chapter many times. Jeremiah is in prison but continues to prophesy and proclaim the Word of the Lord from there. My favorite thought from Jeremiah 32 is the fact that nothing is too hard for the Lord, nothing. He made everything and He can do everything. Jeremiah speaks of a time coming in which land will be bought and sold again. Poverty will be replaced by prosperity. Famine will end and fullness will come.
I often think of fields and wonder is God speaking to me about a specific field in my life.
Yesterday I rode down to the bottom "field" where I live. Cows and horses once ran in the upper and lower field. Now the bottom field is rented out and being farmed by a man who plants soybeans. The upper field I rode through to get to the bottom field no longer looks like a field at all, but more like a jungle. In only two short years bushes and vines and trees and weeds have taken over since the livestock aren't there to keep the field eaten down. As I rode through the bushland I remembered a time about thirty years ago when we first saw this land. It looked much the same then as now. I remember stepping through high grass and weeds to look at the place I would one-day call home. We made plans for building barns and planting gardens. We eventually signed deeds and bought the twenty acres from my husband's uncle. The fields became home. We never planted our garden or built the barn. Now as I look at weeds I wonder what happened to the harvest we hoped to come from this field? Perhaps it will come in the next generation or the next, but I believe good will come from this purchased field.
The other field I often think of when I read of Jeremiah's field, is the "field"... the empty lot that is beside my church. A few years back the church bought the field. Plans were made to do great things with the land. We prayed over the land. One day I and a friend symbolically planted things on the land. We dug a hole and planted scriptures and other things in the field. One day we symbolically scattered watermelon seeds. We chose watermelon seeds because they are known to come up quickly. A quick work is what we prayed to happen in the field. Time went by and because of financial stumbling blocks, and various red tape with city codes, the building project didn't go forward as planned. I often look at the field and wonder what will come of those prayers prayed over it and the seeds we have planted in it. I know God will bring a great harvest from the little field one day. God is faithful. As Jeremiah once said, " Is anything too hard for God?"
Today I leave you with a challenge. Read Jeremiah Chapter 32. Read words written by a man in prison who still had great hope for the future. The last verse of the chapter verse 44 says this in King James:
Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities of the south: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the LORD.
THE MESSAGE version :
Yes, people will buy farms again, and legally, with deeds of purchase, sealed documents, proper witnesses--and right here in the territory of Benjamin, and in the area around Jerusalem, around the villages of Judah and the hill country, the Shephelah and the Negev. I will restore everything that was lost.' GOD's Decree."
I believe restoration is coming to both fields I spoke of in my life. I believe restoration is coming to fields in your life. I believe restoration is coming to "the field." The field is the world
The field is the world, the pure seeds are subjects of the kingdom, the thistles are subjects of the devil. Matthew 13:38
... and remember, God, says nothing in this world is too hard for Him.
Jeremiah 32: 26 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, 27 Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
jbp