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Good Morning! As long as God was writing His words through the pen of His prophets, stories were being told of our discontent with the God of all creation. A God so good that love, longsuffering, mercy and grace are His primary attributes. A God so good that judgment is reserved for one day in time and even that judgment can be avoided because of His own sacrifice, not ours, but His. Our God is a God so good He is always looking for a reason to NOT punish us! That's MY God, ain't God good?!

He is a good God. So good is our God that He feeds us with living water that we may never thirst. So good is our God that He meets our every need and supply's a great many of our undeserved wants. He does whatever He should, could and would do every day, all day.

But here is what makes our God so really good: He does all this despite our failure's to appreciate Him. He does all this despite the fact that we are not so good to God. He does all this despite our "way too often" rejection of His goodness.

Here is an example of our greatest rejection of a God so good to a people so "not good to God". "Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit." The prophet Jeremiah is speaking on behalf of a God who in the next verse indicates that He is "astonished" by our stupidity. As a matter of fact, he states that all of heaven is "astonished" by our absurd alternatives to His goodness! We actually exchanged our God for an unprofitable god that was not even a god, much less THE God.

It had put "God's people" in a position of no profit in their life. Have you ever been serving God and felt as if you just weren't getting ahead? Have you ever enjoyed the goodness of God but never really returned any goodness to Him? That is what these people were doing. But listen to what God calls them as He explains their mistake in Jeremiah 2:13: "For my people". We are still HIS PEOPLE despite our choice to make someone or something else our god. God is good to us, even when we are not. He may not be as good, but He "bee's gooder than He shouder", that's for sure!

But less we believe these Old Testament children are different than we New Testament saints, let me remind us that those He called "HIS PEOPLE" in the age of the oppressive law, are still referred to as HIS PEOPLE" in the age of indwelling grace. 2Corinthians 6:16 tells us that God will "dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Just like those Old Testament people were His peeps', likewise are we His peeps'!

So what was it that God said "my people" were doing that so astonished "Him and the whole of Heaven"? Read on and wewill see if "His peeps of old" are much different than "His peeps of today": "my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

We His people, yet today, have these two struggles every day. First we look for sustenance from anything or anyone rather than finding our sustenance from our fountain of living water. No matter how good God is by providing us all the power and comfort we need through His indwelling Fountain, we seek alternative sources of power and comfort. On top of that we have tried to acquire more from these sources than God would give us. This extra measure of sustenance on our part is an effort to postpone our return to His living water that runs without end.

What I mean by that is we "hew out cisterns that are broken and cannot hold water." God never intended for us to sustain Him through a single act of submission or sustenance. He intends for us to abide IN Him. This abiding relationship is what provides us with living and flowing water. But to try to store His goodness up for a period of time that would allow us to "seek our own" is not God's design. He doesn't even want us to own a cistern. His Provision flows, not stop, all the time, just come and dine!

A few verses later God said through His prophet another sad thing about those of us He calls "my people": "Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number."

How could this happen? Day's without number? Wouldn't we die from thirst? Not if we would hew out a few of our own cisterns and fill them to the rim with our alternatives to the "goodness of God". But the problem with that is our cisterns are broken and will not hold those alternative resources for long. So we need to go back to work finding more water before we lose that alternative resource through the attrition of our cisterns condition.

Why would we dig for water, day in and day out and store it all in some broken vessel that cannot retain our minimal gain when we could turn and learn to live daily at the Well that never runs dry? That my friend is why God and all of heaven are "astonished". What this good God should say is "My peeps are creeps!" But He won't. Because God is good, all the time, God is good!

A QUESTION FOR TODAY'S MEDITATION: "Am I critical? If so, why are you so . . . "