Don't judge fruitfulness by circumstances

It's a mistake we all know we make and yet we repeat it again and again.  We know not to judge by externals and yet we find ourselves doing so again and again.  We hear God's gentle rebuke of Samuel as he looks at Eliab, man looks on the outside but God looks at the heart, and we think we have learnt the lesson.  But then we find ourselves instinctively judging by looking at the outside because that is how our society functions, and how we have been subtly shaped to function.

I was reading Jeremiah 24 this morning when I was reminded again of my instinctive wrong judgement, my tendency to judge by circumstance or externals.  Jeremiah sees two baskets of figs, one very good and one very bad.  Who would you expect the good ones to be?  There are two choices in Jeremiah either they are a picture of those who have been carried into exile by Nebuchadnezzar or they are those who have remained in the land of Judah.  And the bad figs which do they represent?

I wonder if instinctively we think those who remain in God's land must be the good figs, whilst those carried into exile must be the bad, its obvious isn't it?  But God's words remind us again of the danger of judging by externals or circumstances, because the good figs are those in exile whom God has sent away, and who he will give a heart to know him as the LORD.  Who will be his people and whom he will bring back.  By contrast those still in Judah are bad, and they stand under God's judgement, they don't know God, won't know God and won't enjoy the land as his people.

Yet all the external indicators would say the opposite, you don't associate exile with blessing, you don't associate Babylon with a place of security and experiencing God's favour.  It reminds us that what matters is not externals but God, with our God any place can be a place of blessing, abundance, security and relationship, be it a wilderness, a cave, in the midst of a storm, at the foot of a cross, or the entrance of an empty tomb.  It calls me not to be alert to circumstances and externals but alert to and aware of the loving grace and power of our sovereign heavenly Father.