Your uncle’s son is going to come to you, and he’s going to ask you to buy a field.
That’s weird.
Jeremiah had to have thought that was a little weird…
I feel like he had to have questioned if he heard that one right.
I mean, the Babylonians were taking over his land…so why would he be asked to buy any piece of property there?
I’m sure he thought he might have heard the Lord wrong on that one.
Yet one day…
“My uncle’s son came to me… and he said to me, I pray you, buy my field…” Jeremiah 32:8a
I feel like my jaw would have dropped.
I think Jeremiah’s jaw would have too…or he had to have at least smiled and shook his head a little.
“Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.” Jeremiah 32:8b
So…he bought the field.
* * * * *
In this season of feeling a definite call to prayer and to just sit at His feet, this story caught my eye. I can sometimes have a plethora of reasons for why I'm not sitting with Him.
I remember reading a quote one time that said something to this effect,
“In the end, all that facebook and twitter and any other form of social media will stand to prove is that prayerlessness was never due to lack of time.”
Eek.
I never really lack time.
I can make time to do the things I want to do.
So maybe the first thing I should pray is for a desire to pray above all else.
Because I can sit and talk with you and tell you that I desire to do what the Lord wants me to do.
And I do…and I mean that…
And I can talk with you even longer about what I think He might be asking me to do or what He could ask me to do or if He asked me to do this thing, then I would do it…or if He asked me to do that thing, then it’d be hard, but I would try to do it…
I could talk a lot…
Or I could sit with Him…
And let Him talk…
And then maybe I could tell you what He did ask me to do…
Maybe He would tell me to buy a field…
I mean, He told Jeremiah he was not only to buy a field, but He even told him whom he would buy it from.
And it didn’t make sense.
And it didn’t make sense even when he had heard from the Lord beforehand.
So, had he not taken the time to listen…would he have looked at his uncle’s son like he was crazy? Would he have bought the field?
Because logic and rationale and his neighbors and the rest of the world would have told him not to buy some field…
Some field that was about to get taken…
But he knew.
He knew he was supposed to buy that field…
He knew because he’d sat with the Lord long enough to hear Him say, “buy the field.”
May we be a people that sit with the Lord.
May we be of those who recognize what’s of Him when it approaches us.
May we know when to buy the field…
