Jeremiah 35: Taking Correction
Friday, November 14, 2025
Will you not take correction and obey my words?
Each day we are called to listen to God that we might hear how we might correct the course we have set for the day, the week, the month, the year – our lives.
Each day we are given a new opportunity to reset our markers so that they point toward God.
Each day we are invited to trust and hope in the only source and goal of true life – God our creator.
The Psalm in the MAGNIFICAT Evening Prayer is Psalm 49: Why should I fear in evil days the malice of the foes who surround me, men who trust in their wealth, and boast of the vastness of their riches? For no man can buy his own ransom, or pay a price to God for his life. The ransom of his soul is beyond him. He cannot buy life without end, nor avoid coming to the grave. Then do not fear when a man grows rich, when the glory of his house increases, he takes nothing with him when he dies, his glory does not follow him below. Though he flatters himself while he lived: “Men will praise me for my success,” yet he will go join his fathers, who will never see the light any more. In his riches, man lacks wisdom: he is like the beasts that are destroyed. (Cameron 191)
Jeremiah offers to the Jewish community the opportunity to take correction. The Rechabites, a community ignored and sometimes disparaged by the power structure, are a people who demonstrate more fidelity than those who hold positions of authority. They are a people thought too old-fashioned, too simple, and too nomadic to be given much attention; yet the prophet uses them as an example of how to walk in God’s way. They are faithful, obedient, and trusting. And they stand as a stark contrast to the fattened, self-indulgent, and corrupt leadership of the time.
Living in the 21st century we try to be prudent with our resources so that we might have an income when we retire. We try to be good stewards of our resources as we make intelligent purchases and support charities we find worthy of our time and talent. We seek practical guidance, and we take sound advice before we invest our money and ourselves in a person or a cause. We take correction where needed as we look to our future on earth. Jeremiah today urges us to do the same in our spiritual life.
The MAGNIFICAT Mini-Reflection reads: Where we invest our trust and our hope, we invest our lives. Let us choose to invest in the true source of life, Jesus Christ! (Cameron 190)
The Israelites chose to ignore Jeremiah’s warning, and we know how the next centuries unfolded for that nation. Let us heed his words, and the words of Matthew (6:20-21) which are part of today’s Evening Prayer: Store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. (Cameron 190)
Let us take correction so that we might trust God enough to invest all of our wealth in God’s saving power.
A re-post from October 20, 2011.
Senior, Donald, ed. THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.994. Print.
Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 14.1 (2011): 190-191. Print.
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