Dear Friends,
We hope this week's devotional will encourage you in your spiritual walk. We give thanks to Rev. Pam Reed, Registrar and Student Support Tutor, for writing this devotional.
You are welcome to share this and include it in your church newsletters if you wish; we just ask that you please give credit to NTC and the author. Thank you!
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 (NRSV)
29 These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Devotional
Life doesn’t always turn out the way we’d like it to!
Normal life for the people of Judah was no more. Nebuchadnezzar’s armies had destroyed the country, and God’s temple in Jerusalem, with many people captured and taken into exile in Babylon. The people desperately wanted to return to their land. They wanted to resume their comfortable lives with God’s presence in Judah. They wanted a message of hope and restoration. So, they listened when the (false) prophet Hananiah said that they would return from exile within 2 years (28:2-4).
But Jeremiah’s message to them was blunt: they would return to Judah but not for 70 years (29:10). In the meantime, God was calling his people to do the unthinkable – live with their captors. Jeremiah’s message was one of hope, but also a reminder that God’s ways are not always the ways of people.
The people were being called not only to exist in Babylon, but to live. They were to put down roots, build houses, plant gardens, grow their families (5-6). They were to fulfill the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), even in a foreign land.
But they were not only to live in isolation from their captors, but to be concerned for their fellow citizens in Babylon and their welfare (even if they didn’t share their beliefs and way of life) and pray to God for their neighbours (7).
God’s people saw themselves as chosen above all others and separate from others, but they were being called to bless those with whom they were living (fulfilling God’s call to Abram: Genesis 12:1-3). They were not to resent and hate their neighbours, but to seek to understand them and assist them.
What does this mean for us? Are you currently in a place/situation where you would rather not be; where you don’t think you should be; somewhere you desperately want to leave? Can you trust that God might have a purpose for you in this place at this time; that God isn’t absent from this place/situation, but is with you and will remain with you for the duration, no matter how long that is?
(This is not to say that we shouldn’t seek to change our circumstances and passively accept abuse/degradation, but our passage alerts us to God’s presence in our lives in all circumstances.)
Soon after this passage comes a well-known verse: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (29:11). The context of this verse is adversity, and learning to patiently accept the current circumstances, knowing that God has not forgotten us. Restoration and change will come, but it may not always be in the timeframe we would like.
Prayer
God of adversity, help us to remember that you are always with us, no matter what the current circumstances. We are yours and we will always be loved by you. Help us to seek to grow through our circumstances so that we might better serve you all our days. Amen.
Blessings,
Pam Reed (Registrar and Student Support Tutor)