BY JENNIFER WILLIAMS
HERE WAS A TIME WHEN THE WORLD was overrun by fire and destruction, a time when God's people had to put aside their own lives and plans and take up a pen, a sword, or a cross.
A pen. Like Jeremiah's scribe, Baruch, son of Neriah.
Jeremiah was the prophet. The message was his to proclaim. But Baruch wrote it down, message after message--of disaster, fire, destruction, and lamentation. Messages that denied peace and safety and foretold doom.
Baruch had written it all down and had gone into the Temple courts to proclaim it to the people. He'd then hidden away with Jeremiah, while the king sliced away his carefully penned document, line by line, burning the scroll in the fire. And then he wrote it all again.
Baruch, son of Neriah. No wonder he said, "Woe to me! The Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am worn out with groaning and find no rest" (Jer. 45:3).*
On a clear day Mount Zion shone white in the morning sunlight, and the city of Jerusalem, like a polished gem. Baruch had hurried with the crowds through the narrow city streets and alleys as the gates of Jerusalem were busy with marketgoers carrying wares and worshipers leading animals to sacrifice. He'd hoped they would listen--hoped he would see a new age, a rejuvenation of the worship of the true God. But Baruch had seen through Jeremiah's eyes fire burning in those gates and the people going into exile. This would not be the first time there'd been war, but this time destruction would be devastating and complete. Baruch must have wondered, Why this in my time?
In my time, after hearing a sermon heavy with warning about the time of the end, I gathered with my friends in my dormitory room. Sprawled out across the beds and on the floor, we passed around a bag of Doritos, talking easily, letting the complacency of normalcy ease away feelings of trepidation brought on by the preacher's prophecy.
"I want God to come," my roommate said, then admitted, "but not now. My parents grew up; they married and had kids. Why can't I?"
We all agreed. We'd been waiting to grow up our whole short lives. Yes, we knew the world was a wicked place, but our dreams were good.
We Felt Fear
In May of 2001 I sat in a courtyard in modern Jerusalem, somewhere near the place where Baruch had walked and written and lamented. But the fear of impending doom was far from my mind. I was enjoying a study tour to Israel with a group from my school. We'd shopped in the Old City and swum in the Sea of Galilee, and now, late at night (we still weren't tired), a group of us were laughing and playing games outside our rooms. From beyond our snug courtyard walls came a sound like a sonic boom, causing us to pause momentarily in our play. "It's a bomb," I joked in mock fear, sure that it wasn't. We laughed and resumed our game. Then we heard the sirens, and we didn't laugh anymore.
A car bomb had exploded in west Jerusalem. As we heard excited voices yelling in Arabic in the street outside our building, we felt real fear of a danger we had never encountered before.
From inside the walls of our Jerusalem courtyard we remembered newspaper accounts of the tensions between East and West Jerusalem--factual, faraway accounts. Now the stories were real. Were people dying out in the darkness beyond our walls? Would war break out in the streets around us?
But the next morning came clear and sunny and calm. The Arabs were out in the streets, going to work and school as always. In West Jerusalem the Jews were doing the same. The violence and distress, so foreign to us, was common to them. They lived with it--the fear, the pain, the groaning--every day.
While I'd wished in my dorm room that the end of the world would be delayed until I'd lived my life, the Palestinian and Israeli parents and children saw their lives stretching into a future punctuated by violence, permeated by dread.
My Epiphany
Two months after my world glimpse I was back in the security of Pennsylvania. Jerusalem had faded from my mind, and I'd resumed plans for my life. But one stage of life for me was ending, as I stood on the porch of a cabin where I'd played since childhood, knowing I'd never return. My college graduation and the "real world" of adulthood beckoned.
I ran away through mossy woods where I'd hunted wildflowers and bears, where I'd camped and played. A tree curved out like a seat was a good place to have a long cry, and I indulged myself there, remembering a past I both wanted to escape and hold on to. I cried over the ungranted wishes and childhood regrets and the fear of the future and goodbyes.
When I'd wrung all the tears out of me, I didn't feel comforted, only done. Lifting my head, I took a real look at the woods surrounding me. A number of tall stately trunks made a large circle, two trunks twisting toward each other like a gateway. I was sitting in the arcade of a natural cathedral, high branches reaching above me like spired ceilings, and archways with rose windows showing the clear blue sky. I should be on my knees in this place, I realized, worshiping God. And in that moment I knew what the purpose of my life was--not to marry and have children and seek fame and a great name, but to glorify God.
In all my life--wherever I was headed and whatever I'd left behind--my only reason for living, the highest goal there could be, was to bring glory to God's name.
Suddenly it was all clear. I was a team with God, and my first responsibility was to God, as I left my stately cathedral and stepped into a tomorrow I did not know.
Jesus was equal with God when He left it all to become part of a struggling little people on the one fallen planet in the universe. Born as a human being, He lived His whole life for others, for us. And when the final moments and the greatest sacrifice were upon Him, He said: "Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!" (John 12:27, 28).
Thousands of years ago when the old Jerusalem sat polished and precarious on Mount Zion, Baruch groaned and found no rest. But God heard his cry. And through Jeremiah, the God of Israel answered that cry. "The Lord said, 'Say this to him: "This is what the Lord says: I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted, throughout the land. Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life"'" (Jer. 45:4, 5).
Trusting When We Cannot See
Baruch had been born in a time of decision, to seek not for himself, but for God. It was a time when God would have to take the people He had brought from the womb--who had rejected Him, their salvation--and uproot them. God had chosen Baruch for His work, and Baruch's life would be saved because he'd chosen God.
It is easy to want to do great things for God, but it is not easy to bear a cross.
"Of all the gifts that heaven can bestow upon men, fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is the most weighty trust and the highest honor. Not Enoch, who was translated to heaven, not Elijah, who ascended in a chariot of fire, was greater or more honored than John the Baptist, who perished alone in the dungeon" (The Ministry of Healing, p. 478).
Baruch lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of his people. But he probably did not live to see the day, years later, when the captives returned to Israel and rebuilt the Temple of their God. And Baruch also never knew the day, later still, when the "desire of all nations" came to that Temple, to fulfill all things.
Baruch never saw these answers to the prayers of generations, but he bore a "most weighty trust and the highest honor" in his time.
And so, as I emerge from the woods of my childhood, I realize that my life will not be, cannot be, like the one I dreamed of with my dolls as a child. God has a higher purpose and a bigger picture, and it's time to seek His answers.
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*All Scripture quotations in this article are from the New International Version.
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Jennifer Williams is from Walnutport, Pennsylvania. When she wrote this piece, she was attending the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
