Some Reflection and What I’ve Been Thinking About:

The book of Jeremiah is no joke. I’ve been reading again in this book. God sends Jeremiah as a mouthpiece to His people. They had gone after false gods, did whatever they wanted without asking Him what He thought. He described this as 2 sins:
– Forsaking God – the Spring of water
– Dug their own cistern that cannot hold water

They had been faithless and unfaithful.
It’s a sad, mournful, and revealing.

Jeremiah 4:14…wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved, how long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?

But they refuse to repent… are we any different?

He keeps calling and calling and at one point He starts warning and warning. How long does God call before He starts warning?

The whole place is filled with sin and wickedness. He says: TAKE WARNING!

I will turn away from you and make your land desolate so no one can live in it.… and goes on…To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear, the word of the Lord is offensive to them they find no pleasure in it, But I am full of the wrath of the Lord, and I cannot hold it in.

Jeremiah 6

At this point I felt God’s heart of sadness!! How He longs for us to return to Him. We deserve the same judgement. Our nation is just as lost as when He spoke to the people in Jeremiah verse 7:5...amend your ways and your doings….

I’ve been praying and asking God to save us, to help the church repent. To help us be positioned and ready for when the people of this nation will come in revival. For when a wave of repentance is to come. I implore you, Christian, if you know the Lord, amend your ways and doings. Look at your life, your speech, your attitudes, your goings, and doings.

For grace to occur, you must have conviction, the revelation of sin, the judgment, or the commencement of a judgment, followed by the act of repentance through both confession and the literal act of turning away from the sin. Without the conviction, there is no revelation, no emergence of the truth, and therefore no direction – so something occurs to bring forward a conviction over a people or nation. Then, in addition, a judgment is given.

Derek Prince

Will we be judged as righteous? Because we have turned and returned to the Lord, or will we be judged wickedly? Because we refuse to turn and, in our pride, think we are doing pretty good and not like the rest of those people out there. This is about …. what’s in my heart, your heart, our hearts.

If there were ever a time needed for a pause, for a redirect, this year would be the year to believe and stand firm upon God’s incredible grace and promises upon your life. This year can be a year of grace as favor and mercy in the form of blessings and joy, or it can be a year of grace as in the form that is exposed darkness. Amend your heart!

---

A warning and caution:

I like to grab old books off of the thrift store shelf. Most of the ones I like to check out are from before 1970. I used to grab just anything in the area of religion and self-help and see what it was about. However, it is a great idea to look up the author and find a little bit of history about them. Recently, I grabbed a book off of my shelf that I have had sitting there for years and years. Probably some random run to salvation army with my daughter just to get out of the house. It is interesting. But something about it, every once in a while, seemed off about the intention and what this book’s author believed about God and religion. So, I stopped reading for a second and looked the author up. He was a very prominent masonic writer. Now why does that matter? It matters a lot.

Freemasonry (or Masonry, for short) is one of the world’s most historic membership organizations, a 300-year-old worldwide fraternity. The largest worldwide secret society—an oath-bound society, often devoted to fellowship, moral discipline, and mutual assistance, that conceals at least some of its rituals, customs, or activities from the public. Freemasonry is not a Christian institution. In most traditions, the applicant for admission is required to be an adult male, and all applicants must also believe in the existence of a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul.

Anyway, you get the idea, not Christian, but must believe in the existence of a supreme being…. who the heck is that if not Jesus?

Check your books, just saying!

So, I threw the book away and prayed and cut off in the Spirit anything attached to a book written by a man who was a part of a fraternity that doesn’t believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

---

The weeping women

As I said, am reading through the book of Jeremiah in the Bible. Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. God had sent him to Jerusalem and Judah to call them to repentance. The reading of it is wild. I am only in chapter 9. In these first few chapters of the book, I have found out that.

• Judgement was coming!
• God described Israel as a devoted bride who loved Him and followed Him and was holy, but Israel had now gone after worthless idols and became worthless themselves.
• God said, “She has not returned to Me with her whole heart but in pretense.” Only in pretending.
• He calls them to break up your unplowed ground and do not sow among thorns, circumcise your hearts.
• But they refuse to repent.
• He begins warning them for not listening to His call. Destruction is coming.
• He says, amend your ways and your doings; and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
• None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, “What have I done? Each pursues their own course like a horse charging into battle.
• God says, they do not acknowledge me.
• It was so bad that the desolation of their hearts was beginning to reflect in the land. The crops were drying up, what was left was bitter, and the water was turning poison.

Now here is what caught my eye this week.

¹⁷ This is what the Lord Almighty says:
“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come;
    send for the most skillful of them.
¹⁸ Let them come quickly
    and wail over us
till our eyes overflow with tears
    and water streams from our eyelids.
¹⁹ The sound of wailing is heard from Zion:
    ‘How ruined we are!
    How great is our shame!
We must leave our land
    because our houses are in ruins.’”
²⁰ Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord;
    open your ears to the words of his mouth.
Teach your daughters how to wail;
    teach one another a lament.
²¹ Death has climbed in through our windows
    and has entered our fortresses;
it has removed the children from the streets
    and the young men from the public squares.

Jeremiah 9

These people were so hardened of heart and unable to see their shame and sin that God said to send for the wailing woman. These were professional lamenters that would come when someone died, or life tossed you for a loop and help you to grieve.

Isn’t that interesting that there was a profession for women called “wailers” who made space for people to let out what we all naturally hold in – our tears, our grief, our sorrow, our pain, our anger?

They helped people process what was happening.

Do we cry over our sin? Do we weep over our desolation?

Poetry

I see a land rejoicing 
I see a land remors-ing
are we doing each for the right reason?

Cheering in victory 
but sometimes also jeering  
Is this a heart of kindness or something else? 

Wailing and screaming 
Cutting away at self to reflect the horror 
Is this what is healthy or something else? 

Where are the mourners
the lamenters and the grief wearers 
who see what is happening all around? 

The lost and tossed and hurting 
meet the self-righteous and the gloating 
is this the way we want to be representing? 

No, not all.

I see and understand
Some genuinely seeking to find out what they are missing 
and others gently loving those to see without their glasses

Some looking left 
Some looking right 
May we not miss this at all...

 don't forget to look up 

So, a thought forward:

I heard a tid-bit from a lady on X that talked about the significance of hair. I looked up what she was suggesting and here is what I found. This is what the Lakota and other Native American tribes believe:

“If you cut your hair, your soul and your spirit bleeds,” he said. “Your hair contains your memories and things that you grew up with…that your matriarch, your mom, and your aunties put into your hair. So, it contains all your memory, all your joy, your strength. In our culture, this is really important because we have this tradition, ceremonial tradition that goes with our secret tight keeping up the soul.”

Native News Online

Some would shave their heads as a challenge to their enemies

and others would shave their heads in release, mourning, and await renewal.

A letting go of what was and waiting for the new to come.

In the Bible by refraining from cutting hair or by shaving it, individuals symbolized their humility and submission to God’s will.

“Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship.” – Job 1:20

Job’s act of shaving his head showed humility and reverence during a period of suffering. The gesture reflected his grief but also his submission to God in the face of loss, symbolizing his recognition that life’s blessings and hardships are under God’s sovereignty.

“At that time the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, called you to weep and mourn. He told you to shave your heads in sorrow for your sins and to wear clothes of burlap to show your remorse.” Isaiah 22:12

God’s call to shave heads here symbolizes humility and repentance. Shaving hair was an outward display of inner contrition and acknowledgement of sin, encouraging humility before God as people recognized their need for forgiveness and transformation.

“Shave your head in mourning, and weep alone on the mountains. For the Lord has rejected and forsaken this generation that has provoked his fury.” Jeremiah 7:29

This verse calls for a profound act of humility and sorrow. By shaving their heads, people were to visibly show their grief over sin and its consequences, reflecting the severity of rejecting God’s commands and the deep sorrow in returning to Him with repentance.

I find the significance interesting due to the fact that after the election a group of women are calling to one another to cut their hair. I also wonder if there is a spiritual significance to it that they do not understand. Perhaps God is calling them to mourn and weep and to let go of what was and move forward. I sure hope that all that are hurting and fearful are able to recalibrate to a new way and also, I pray that those who are lost find Jesus in the midst of their suffering.