If the prophet Jeremiah comes across a bit gloomy and depressed, he has reason to. He lived during Judah’s darkest days, when apostasy, idolatry, perverted worship and moral decay seemed to be everywhere. Called to proclaim the Word of the Lord (“to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant”), he would be ignored, rejected and persecuted. And he would live to see his nation destroyed, and its people led off into exile. It was enough to break a prophet’s heart.