Jeremiah 30:12-17: a reflection

12For the LORD says, “Your hurt is incurable. Your wound is grievous. 13There is no one to plead your cause, that you may be bound up. You have no healing medicines. 14All your lovers have forgotten you. They don’t seek you. For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins were increased. 15Why do you cry over your injury? Your pain is incurable. For the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins have increased, I have done these things to you. 16Therefore all those who devour you will be devoured. All your adversaries, everyone of them, will go into captivity. Those who plunder you will be plunder. I will make all who prey on you become prey. 17For I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds,” says the LORD, “because they have called you an outcast, saying, ‘It is Zion, whom no man seeks after.’”

God speaks to his wounded people in stark terms: Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous. There is no one to plead your cause; there are no healing medicines. Their wound, brought on by their own sin, was beyond any human remedy, past all cure. And yet, into this hopeless diagnosis, God speaks a promise that overturns it: For I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds, says the LORD. What no human medicine could cure, God himself would heal.

Notice the movement from incurable to healed. The wound was declared beyond all human help, past cure; there was nothing anyone could do. But God does what no human remedy could do: he promises to heal the incurable wound himself. And notice why he acts: because they called you an outcast, saying, this is Zion, whom no one seeks. God heals the very ones written off by others, the outcast whom no one seeks; he acts for those given up as hopeless.

That is hope for wounds that seem incurable. There are hurts in our lives that seem beyond healing, wounds no human help can cure, brokenness we have given up as hopeless. But what is beyond all human remedy is not beyond God; he heals the incurable, restores what seems hopelessly lost, and he does it especially for the outcast, the ones others have written off. Bring your incurable wounds to the God who heals them. Do not conclude that because no human help can cure your hurt, it must remain forever; God heals what is beyond all human remedy. The God who promised to heal his people's incurable wound is able to heal yours; bring it to him, the God who restores what none else can.

Lord, you spoke to your people of a wound that was incurable, beyond any human remedy, and yet you promised, I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds; what no human medicine could cure, you yourself would heal, and you would do it for the outcast whom no one seeks. Give me hope for wounds that seem incurable. There are hurts in my life that seem beyond healing, wounds no human help can cure, brokenness I have given up as hopeless. But what is beyond all human remedy is not beyond you; you heal the incurable, restore what seems hopelessly lost, and you do it especially for the outcast, the ones others have written off. Help me bring my incurable wounds to you, who heal them. Keep me from concluding that because no human help can cure my hurt, it must remain forever. You heal what is beyond all human remedy; help me bring my wounds to you, the God who restores what none else can. Heal me, Lord.