It’s time to get back to Jeremiah’s visions. 

My grandma used to ask: “did you dream about hotdogs?” When we woke up at her house for sleepovers. She was curious about how we slept, and just about us. She really loved us. 

To be honest, I dream about so many things, it is wild, and almost never hotdogs.  I really have to hold back the recount of dreams from invading my day, but then again they dissipate quicker than steam (except a few ironed in wrinkles of weird memories). And I have to keep the day from invading this space each morning for dreaming about the Lord. It’s not a dream. I actually know this reality WITH the Lord us the most precious cherished time.  That’s why there seems to be this time of reading and writing. It’s not ambitious as a new friend said, not an achievement either, it’s just the way the Lord has me start my day. (I highly recommend it,  hold back the day with the Way)…

Let’s get back to Jeremiah, as I read and write through this old testament. Jeremiah had a vision, a placement of figs by God to check the signal to Jeremiah’s head. I’m not going to debate visions and dreams, I think Jeremiah was awake for this. “What do you see, Jeremiah?” FIGS!

FIGure out the meaning – not so hard – these figs were good and bad – we could imagine that they would understand that – didn’t take a monkey from Indiana Jones to taste the figs and know they were poison – these figs were simply just good and bad. FIGure out the meaning – God was using good figs to represent those who listened and although they were taken into captivity, they kept a heart gifted by God to know Him. Whole Hearted Believers. Whole-making God. That should be us too – we are but travelers in this world but the worldliness of it should not keep us from focus on God – the worldliness means that we are technically exiles here – out of the Garden – but of God’s choosing – and we can listen and eventually be returned to a better state. There are good things here on earth – good pockets of people and places and good reasons to put down our roots and be planted and not plucked up… make the best of everything…

And the bad Figs – FIGures that it is the people not listening – not “fruitful” – not FIGuring out the Way of God, what He requests.

I don’t know how you start your day – but I FIGure if you are reading this and reading scripture that you FIGured out God is the ONE who gives good – so let us listen to Him.

Hold back the Day and carve out time for Him – He knows the Way.

Amen 

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Jeremiah 24:1-10 NKJV

The Sign of Two Baskets of Figs

The Lord showed me, and there were two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs which could not be eaten, they were so bad. Then the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”

And I said, “Figs, the good figs, very good; and the bad, very bad, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad.”

Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent out of this place for their own good, into the land of the Chaldeans. For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

‘And as the bad figs which cannot be eaten, they are so bad’—surely thus says the Lord—‘so will I give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, his princes, the residue of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. I will deliver them to trouble into all the kingdoms of the earth, for their harm, to be a reproach and a byword, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I shall drive them. And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, till they are consumed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.’ ”