the Third Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Jeremiah 2:13—Broken cisterns that can hold no water.
In yonder fruitful valley a fountain rises, full of living, sparkling, delicious water. But, see, all the able-bodied inhabitants have left their houses, climbing to the rugged rocks above their homes, and are engaged with incredible labor in hewing them out those rocky cisterns which travellers tell us abound in Eastern lands. The heights resound with the ringing notes of hammer and chisel; for months they labor at their assiduous toils; but when all is done, the cisterns are discovered to be broken by flaws, and to provide but brackish water at the best.
Such is the picture painted from life by Jeremiah; but how truly it represents the spirit of the world! Leaving God, in whom alone man’s thirsty spirit can find satisfaction and thirst-quenching, he hath set himself, with infinite labor, to hew out cisterns of gold and silver, cisterns of splendid houses and reputable characters, and lavish alms deeds, cisterns of wisdom and ancient lore. From any of these the hewer thinks he will obtain sufficient supplies to last him for his life. At the best, however, the water is brackish, wanting the sparkle of oxygenated life; hot with the heat of the day.
Jehovah may well ask whether such a spectacle can be matched anywhere else in the world. Heathen peoples are notoriously true to their ancestral faiths and practices. For vast eras the worship of ancestors has been maintained in China, and of fire by the followers of Zoroaster. There is no change in the votive offerings which the poor Hindus of all ages have laid before their impassive deities. "Hath a nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit."
