Oh that I had in the wilderness a travelers’ lodging; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous people. (Jeremiah 9:2)

These words come from one of Yahweh’s prophets, a man wholly unlike those who call themselves prophets and peculiar ambassadors for God in the modern era. In fact, this expression – wanting a barebones shack in the desert – follows the prophet’s wish that his head was full of water and his eyes a fountain so he could weep to the max day and night.

Wishing for an exemplary life may appear as something other

Was Jeremiah’s all-day weeping wish a sign of his despair? Was he just associating his abhorrence of the pollution of his people with God’s? Was he exaggerating anguish at Israel’s evil and treachery? Some may see a suicidal resignation. Jeremiah is not alone in having a vision of himself living in a desert. Perhaps he is a man like John the Baptist, who in answer to the divine call, departed from his father’s house to live in the Judean desert. John’s leap of faith was massive: he left behind a calling in the priesthood to be Messiah’s herald.

Make my head a reservoir and my eyes a fountain

Prophetic people have been thought to be those versed in the unravelling of predictions, but surely prophetic life has to distinguish itself by a life in the here and now than it has to do with talking about what’s next. The ascetic life has tremendous appeal because it brings to light the difference between the married and profligate life of some people called patriarch, king, and prophet and the holiness on the other hand of the Sender of the prophets. I call to witness the Lord Yeshua spending nights alone in prayer and perfecting hs mission all alone on the tree. So let us not deny the sentiment: the wish to weep to the max and settle for a shack in the desert, even when we are surrounded by and know how to enjoy the company and support of sinful others.