Revealed Hearts

At times I find myself across the table from someone who is pouring their heart out and wondering, "Why would God allow this to happen to me?"  The situations and circumstances are different, but the question is the same, "If God really cared about me, why doesn't he make my life better?"  Everything in me wants to assure them that God really does care and that things will get better.  The truth is, sometimes they don't get better.  Sometimes they get worse.  This morning as I was reading the second and third chapters of Jeremiah, I found myself wondering how God must feel.  He tells Jeremiah, "This is what the Lord says: 'I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown...What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far from me?  They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."  (Jeremiah 2:2, 5T NIV).  I suppose God, if he chose to, could easily flip the same kinds of questions back on us.  Why do we stray?  Why do we forget God?  Why do we follow worthless idols?  Why do we pursue selfish gain?  Why do we forsake God for broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13)?   I don't envy Jeremiah.  He was charged with the task of revealing people's hearts.  Yet it's at these moments, when our hearts are revealed, that we really seek the change we need and find ourselves running to the arms of a God who says, "Return faithless people...for I am your husband.  I will chose you" (Jeremiah 3:14).  Thank you Lord for choosing us.  Help us to always choose you, regardless of the choices of others.