Joel 2:23-32 In the brief writings of the prophet Joel, Israel has suffered a devastating loss of crops due to swarms of locusts. This destruction of natural resources seems to have come as a kind of discipline that pointed toward “the day of the Lord” in which God’s justice would come and eliminate the evil…

Jeremiah 31:27-34  The prophet’s words vividly illustrate the much-anticipated community of the new covenant to a people who have been suffering in estrangement from YHWH for many years. Verses 27 through 30 use a potentially confusing metaphor to describe a common complaint, namely that innocent generations of God’s covenant people are languishing as divine punishment…

Jeremiah 29:1,4-7 The Rule of St. Benedict talks about the virtue of stability. In being stable, we open ourselves to find Christ in people and places and situations that are unpleasant or mundane. God’s people in the reading from Jeremiah found themselves in exile for their sins. While our circumstances are not nearly as disheartening…

Lamentations 1:1-6 For the people of Judah the fall of Jerusalem and exile must have been a shock. They lost the security that their great city provided. They lost all their possessions. They lost their freedom. Through it all they felt abandoned by God. Their theological understanding was that God gave them their economic and…

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 In our passage today, we hear about a besieged city. Jeremiah is told by God to buy land. He buys it for 30 pieces of silver, a hefty sum that is echoed later in the story of Judas’ death. If the three most important things in real estate are location, location, and…