Plans

“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

            This is one of those favorite verses that I need to memorize and on which I need to meditate. Technically, I need to meditate on it, to refresh my memory. I memorized it years ago, but “where’s that verse that talks about a future and a hope?” I’ll claim the excuse that it’s early in the morning and I’m not quite awake yet.

           And since it’s early morning, “technical” is on full alert. Technically, this passage was a proclamation to Israel. Does it apply to all nations? Would that mean that God doesn’t know the plans He has for the United States? Or Canada, or whatever country you care to name? Even if He weren’t omniscient, it’d be silly to say that He might not know His plans for a nation. Could those plans not be for welfare, but for calamity? Could they be to deny a country a future or a hope? In theory, yes. In actuality, we have repeated instances in which God sent warnings to the nations on which He rained down judgment. His plans, then, were designed to give a future and a hope to any nation who would heed His warning.

          On the national level, then, it’s all well and good, but is God a collectivist, working only at a national or “identity” level? Is your only part in God’s plan as a member of some demographic group or nation? I have found nothing in Scripture that suggests that God doesn’t have plans for us as individuals in addition to the plans He has for the groups of which we are part. And if He has plans for us as individuals, there seems no reason to believe that those plans are not just as much for our welfare and not for calamity, to give us a future and a hope. This verse is ours, and it's something to hold on to as we go into a new year.