Jeremiah 5:3                   New English Translation             

3 Lord, I know you look for faithfulness.

But even when you punish these people, they feel no remorse.

Even when you nearly destroy them, they refuse to be corrected.

They have become as hardheaded as a rock.

They refuse to change their ways.

Affluence

We grow in things materially as we gather too many things

We dearly pay the price for it, but it’s not only by our being

It is a part of self we produce that reaches out toward the future

As we leave our children with a lifestyle with too little meaning

The part of self we give them is what we don’t like about ourselves

With words, we want to guide them, producing only a hollow sound

We whisper close to our last breath: “If I just could do it over again.”

Since our "true" heart died long ago, and now our flesh is winding down.

Jan Wienen