Jeremiah 9: A New Normal?

What's so important about a basket of fruit?   

Chapter 24  

Jeremiah had predicted the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and indeed in 586 BCE Nebuchadnezzar led his troops into Israel and Jeremiah’s prophesies were fulfilled.  But that was far from the end of Jeremiah’s career as God’s prophet.  In Chapter 24 we have another image from everyday life: a basket of figs, some of which are still good and some of which have rotted.  Jeremiah said that the good figs were the people being exiled into Babylon and God would protect them and the bad figs were staying in Israel to rot.  Jeremiah had the choice of going to Babylon but chose to stay with the rotten people left behind.  I read recently that when the world is turned upside down, there are two options.  You can retreat and try to go back to how things were or move forward to create something different.  God cursed the ones who tried to hold on to what was lost and blessed those who chose to make a new life under new circumstances.  Our yearning to ‘return to normal’ is natural but it is not going to work.  We can’t go back to how things were before the pandemic.  Our best choice is to create a new life that is better than the one that has been lost.  “The Nature of Things” had an episode recently that explained how possums and foxes and vultures work in rural and urban ecosystems not only to clean up food garbage and carrion but to kill the viruses and bacteria that can lurk in these wastes.  Protecting our biodiversity is one thing we need to do differently in our post-pandemic better world. What will you do so that you are found to be one of the good fruits?