Before You Were Born I Knew You

Jeremiah 1:4–10

There was a boy named Jeremiah.

And one day, God spoke to him. He did not come in a dream or a far-off rumble of thunder. God spoke the way you might lean close and whisper to someone you have loved for a very long time.

"Before I shaped you inside your mother," God said, "I knew you. Before you took your very first breath, I had already set you apart. I picked you, Jeremiah. I want you to carry my words to the people."

And Jeremiah got scared.

He looked down at his own small hands. He thought about his own young voice, the one that sometimes wobbled. And he said, "Oh, please. I can't. I don't even know what to say. I'm only a child. I'm too little for something this big."

Have you ever felt that way? Too small and too young, while everyone else seemed to know exactly what they were doing, as if the important things were for bigger people and never for you.

God knew that feeling was sitting heavy in Jeremiah's chest. And he did not laugh at it. He did not say, "Don't be silly." He did something tenderer than that.

"Do not say 'I am only a child,'" God told him, gently. "You will go where I send you. You will say what I give you to say. And listen, Jeremiah. This is the part I most want you to hear.

Do not be afraid.

For I am with you."

Long before, a man named Moses had stood in front of a burning bush and said nearly the same words: I can't speak. And God had given him the same answer he was giving Jeremiah now: I will be with you.

Then something happened that Jeremiah never forgot. God reached out and touched his mouth. His trembling, too-young mouth, the one that did not know what to say. And God said, "There. I have put my own words right here, on your lips."

God did not wait for Jeremiah to grow up. He did not wait for him to feel ready, or brave, or big enough. God knew him before he was born. God chose him while he was still afraid. And then God came close and touched the very part of him that was shaking, and filled it.

That is the kind of heart God has. He does not pick the ones who already feel strong. He bends low to the small and the scared and says, I knew you first, and I am not leaving.

And that touch on Jeremiah's mouth was pointing ahead. Because one day God would not only send words. He would send the Word himself. Jesus, walking right into the middle of frightened people, touching trembling mouths and shaking hands, saying with his own warm voice, "Do not be afraid. I am with you."

So Jeremiah stood up, a boy with God's words on his lips, and went where God sent him. And the hands that had shaped him before his first breath were not done shaping. Turn the page, and you will see those hands at work at a potter's wheel.