This year during Lent, our readings from the Old Testament will focus on the five covenants, or promises, that God made with the people of Israel before the coming of Jesus.  Each covenant makes a shift in the people from past to new future that reminds us of our baptism.  This is the fifth covenant, which God makes as a future promise to Israel.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (New Revised Standard Version)
³¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Devotional Questions from the ELCA’s Book of Faith Initiative:
What scares, confuses, or challenges me in this text?  What do I have questions about?

What delights me in this text?  What do I like about it?

What stories or memories does this text stir up in me?  You might remember a time when you learned something by heart, or suddenly remembered something that you had learned by heart in time’s past, for example. 

What is God up to in this text?  What is God calling you to do or to be because of this story?