The lectionary text for today is part of a larger unit that has sometimes been called "The Little Book of Comfort." Old Testament scholars view Jeremiah 30-31 as a collection of independent oracles inserted into the book of Jeremiah to introduce the hopeful chapter 32 where the prophet of doom evidences his faith in the ultimate redemption of God by purchasing a field at Anathoth.1

Certainly all of us need our little books of comfort. Life deals us its downs with its ups, its discomforts with its comforts. We practice certain idiosyncrasies of comfort which can be summoned to assist us in situations where despair and anguish seem to be our only options. Many a child will sit in a worship service and make it through particularly boring sermons by counting the number of pipes on the organ o…