You feel like a failure! But in                 necessitated a hasty escape by many down
                  whose eyes? Jeremiah’s life   into Egypt. History tells us he died there and
                  and labor were one huge       was buried in an unrecognized grave. There
                  failure, zilch, nada, in the  he lies awaiting the resurrection morning.
                  eyes of his contemporaries.
He accomplished virtually nothing in the            Being a failure in the eyes of your friends
way of reform or revival. His preaching fell    and associates counts for very little. Jeremiah’s
on deaf ears. Maybe PowerPoint would have       life was arranged by God Who told him what
helped. He lived a very lonely life, received   to expect as far as deaf ears and lonely days.
little if any appreciation, had perhaps one     Jeremiah accomplished God’s will in his life,
convert and follower, Baruch, and saw no        and nothing else really matters. He gets a per-
disciples gathered around him. He was im-       fect 10 from God for “success” in his life and
prisoned, mocked, and suspected of being a      ministry.
traitor, a fifth-columnist.
                                                The Pain of Self-Awareness
    He watched with horror and tears as the
nation was carried away into captivity and          Perhaps it is not that you are a failure in
then had to watch the internal strife which     the eyes of others, but a failure in your own
                                                eyes.