Too Much to Process

I have not yet had a chance to sit down and sift through my notes to write up a trip report to encapsulate the last two weeks in Kenya. I need to get this done, and I will. But not today. Therefore, I am left to ponder singular events and activities for the moment.

On Sunday, I briefly mentioned a reading in Jeremiah that impacted me in a strong way while in Kenya - Jeremiah 2:5, Thus says the Lord, “What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?”


I was reading this one morning during my Quiet Time. I hadn't read Jeremiah in a long time, and so I just picked it up that morning. There's so much in the first two chapters that catch our attention, and so I've never really dwelt on this verse before. The image of becoming empty because of walking after emptiness shocked my sleepy-headed system. I asked myself, In what ways have I been walking after emptiness and becoming empty?


One could easily say, "Well, here I am in Kenya on a mission trip. I've given up so much earthly comfort to be here. Surely this is anything but walking after emptiness." And it is true. But if one satisfied himself with this statement, he can successfully ignore the power of the passage. Even if I'm willing to go to Kenya, that doesn't mean I don't have times in my life where I'm walking after emptiness.


I can walk after emptiness by wasting time in front of the tube, by pursuing recreation to the point of imbalance, by getting caught up in consumerism, by letting my mind wander onto topics best left alone, even by pursuing ministry goals for personal benefit more than the purposes of the Kingdom. Anything (and indeed everything) I do that is unrelated to the Kingdom of God in some way is walking after emptiness, from sin to idleness to occupying myself with strictly temporal matters.


And by pursuing emptiness, we become empty. In a sense, we get what we've been looking for, to a tragic fault.


"Weigh" the hours of your week. Do you hours have any weight in God's Kingdom? If too few of your hours are pulled by the gravity of heaven, perhaps you are walking after too much emptiness. For our pursuits to be un-empty, they must be substantive in God's economy. We will get what we're looking for - if we walk after emptiness, we'll find it. If we walk after the weighty stuff of God's Kingdom, we'll find it.


I didn't expect that a mission trip to a developing nation would reveal just how empty some of my pursuits are. However, had I read that passage from the comfort of home, I may well have missed what it has to say.