Broken Cisterns - 4

After more than two years, we take our final look at Broken Cisterns.

Jeremiah declares these broken cisterns are cracked and cannot hold water.

Even a perfectly executed cistern cut from solid rock can be emptied when there is no rain to replenish it. The water may stagnate over time and cease to be potable. Debris or animals may fall in and contaminate the water with decay and disease. Any or all of these are the short-comings of a perfect cistern.

But the verdict pronounced by the LORD indicates these cisterns were made with fatal flaws. These alternatives to the Life-giving LORD leak. They function below their design. They miss their own mark and purpose. Though made to hold run-off water, these cracked cisterns can't even do that.

This imagery echoes back to the fatal choice of the first humans in God's very good garden. They sought to be more, attain more, improve more than they were fresh from the hand of their Divine Creator. What they had in God was perfect and in seeking to add to it, they achieved only the diminishing of what they once were and had.

Both the promise of the forbidden fruit of knowledge of good and evil and idols fall short. They lessen rather than add to the lives of those who turn to them. All the effort, time, investment and planning drains way to emptiness. 

Broken people produce broken things. The Fall fractures our final drafts. All we can make are sloppy copies. Choosing to forsake our Covenant LORD doesn't just miss His Goodness or diminish living a little bit. Our self-made holes fail utterly and leave us with nothing but a gaping gash in our empty soul.

The choice seems clear: limitless life in loving covenant with our LORD or vacant, vacuous want in the broken cisterns of our willful well-digging. Yet, the LORD's people continue this pitiable exchange.