Jeremiah Chapter 32: When we don’t understand God’s plan

My husband and I recently battled a bout of illness together. Hoping to boost our immune systems, I began taking ginseng tablets and encouraged him to do the same.

When I passed him a tablet, he looked at it curiously. Nah.

Why not? I asked. There are scientific papers that shows it works.

He replied, I know it works. I just don’t know why or how.

Like my husband, sometimes we need to know the how and why before we act. 

The inquisitive (and perhaps cheekily rebellious) child might quip, But why? to his parents’ requests. In her bid to fully contribute to a project, the thinking manager might ask her whimsical boss who’s just thrown out yet another new idea, How would this help?

But we are not always granted this luxury. To God’s whys and hows, there will be times where we simply have no answer.

In Jeremiah 32, the Lord asked Jeremiah to buy the field belonging to Hanamel. This would have seemed odd, since Jeremiah had been prophesying that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon.

Indeed, all of Jerusalem was experiencing this prophecy coming true. Babylon’s armies were besieging Jerusalem at that moment!

Why buy a field in a place being destroyed just as God prophesied? God did not explain say.

Yet understanding the why was not Jeremiah’s top priority.

His first order of business was to do exactly as God had said: buy the field from Hanamel before witnesses.

Only after completing what God asked of him did Jeremiah seek to know why (24-25).

And yet something else came before Jeremiah’s why: praise.

Jeremiah’s praise was elaborate and well thought out, mentioning from verses 17 to 23: 

• God’s great power as the Creator of the heavens and the earth
• Nothing is too hard for God
• God’s lovingkindness
• God’s justice in punishing sinners
• God’s awesome wisdom and actions
• God’s omniscience
• God’s miracles and deliverance in Egypt (centuries before Jeremiah’s time!)
• God’s gift of the Promised Land
• God’s deserved punishment upon His people for their sins, through the Babylonian army

What an extensive list!

His praise was not superficial. Neither was it simply a thoughtless “Hallelujah, praise the Lord”, as some might perfunctorily pray.

Jeremiah wanted to know God’s why. But it did not distract him from his praise in prayer. It also did not shake who He knew God to be—remembering this would have increased his faith while he did not understand God’s intentions.

Has your praise in prayer grown cold?

Is your pursuit to know God’s why overpowering who you know God to be?

God’s silence is a time for our faith and praise to speak.

Despite not knowing God’s why, we can still do as God says.

Despite not knowing God’s why, we can still pray beautiful praise because we know Him.

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