The old wineskins are shredded to bits

And the other brother.  Our family didn't have a television when we were kids, so we read and wrote a lot.

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD."

Jeremiah 31:33-34

Alene and I went to seminary for a year right after we got married. We studied Systematic Theology and we studied the Bible, cover-to-cover. We studied Old Testament History and New Testament Epistles. We studied Prophets and Poetry and Revelation. We studied Apologetics and Hermeneutics and Liberation Theology. We read books and wrote papers and stayed up late memorizing the finer points of the Christian Faith.

This passage from the book of Jeremiah tells us about a new plan. The Lord says that the old covenant, which relied on people following the Law and the Protocol and the Tradition, basically didn’t work very well. We the People could not seem to walk a straight line. We messed it up continually. The new plan, says the Lord, is for the people to know God. Not “know” him like memorizing the finer points of the Christian Faith. Not “know” him like being experts in the Law and Protocol, or getting good grades in seminary. Just to know him as we know our friend–to know God in our hearts and lives. We will live in relationship with God.

So the question for us is whether this is possible. Are we living in the New Plan or the Old Plan? Are we trying to memorize the Law and the Protocol? Are we trying to discipline ourselves and study ourselves into the knowledge of God, or can we live in relationship with our Creator? Maybe we are doing both. I went to seminary for a year. I read the Bible. I read books about the Bible, and books about the books about the Bible.

What we can aspire to, though, is to live in such a way that our lives are infused with the love of God. I am thinking of a secure, living love that comes out of a real relationship, and not out of the book–any book. Maybe this love and relationship can become our first language–the means in which we live and think and experience life.

Dear loving God, we hope to know you. We hope to live in faith and love that comes from inside of us, where you have written on the flesh of our hearts. Please lead us into true life. Amen.