Your Confinement is a Gift! By Jill Briscoe Are you climbing the walls after months of this stay-at-home order that feels like it will never end? Do you feel like you are under house arrest─trapped inside 24/7 with family while juggling kids, work, and school? Not being able to get out and enjoy a simple outing with friends or an evening out for dinner at a favorite restaurant can leave us feeling like we're prisoners in our own home. The prophet Jeremiah could certainly relate. In Jeremiah 36, he and Baruch continued their work with the Word of God and the opposition did their level best to silence them, even putting Jeremiah under house arrest. They did not, however, confine Baruch. Perhaps Baruch’s friends put in a good word for him. Maybe there were sympathetic people in the government than we know about who could pull a few strings. In any case, surely God’s hand kept Baruch free for the job He wanted him to do. Having Jeremiah confined to his quarters did not stop the men from doing their work. In fact, it was in this restricted situation that they accomplished their work, and precious scrolls were written. I think of the apostle Paul in prison saying, “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (Phil. 1:12). Would the prison epistles have been written without the prison? Hardly. Imagine doing without the book of Philippians! Would the book of Jeremiah be in our Bible today if Jeremiah had remained a free man? Jeremiah and Baruch learned to see an opportunity in every difficulty and used their time of forced inactivity to good advantage. There are myriad ways you can understand the feelings of Jeremiah and Baruch. There is so much to do, and yet you have been put under house arrest! Use this time. If God wanted you out and about you would be out and about. The Lord gave the two men a gift of grace when He gave them this period of forced confinement─and He will do the same for us in our forced confinement due to the coronavirus.
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