Changing His Mind

Over the past five sermon posts, we have been talking about Jeremiah and the potter.  We've looked at an interpretation of the scripture that sees the passage as a communal one - not how God is shaping you or me, but how God is shaping all of us - the community.  I used it to talk about how God shapes the Church.

There was another part of what I read that talks about another aspect of the passage.  Remember that this is Jeremiah, and he speaks to the community in exile.  I imagine it was a desperate time, wondering if God had abandoned them or if God were just now powerful enough to save them.

But look at Jeremiah 18:7-8

At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. 

God might change God's mind.

We hear it often said that God is unchanging. That God is constant.  With that kind of faith, God would have a law, and when it was broken, God's response would be predictable and unchanging.  For the nation of Israel, it meant exile.

But what if God will change God's mind?

It's grace, isn't it?

Yes, I see the part that says the nation must "turn from its evil," but I think a God that never changes, that fiercely imposes the rules, would never turn back - would desert us and leave us. A God that changes would offer grace.

Thank God for grace.