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In Context

             This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:4-11)

 

I’ve probably shared Jeremiah 29:11 recently, but it came up as the verse of the day on BibleGateway.com, and I decided it would be useful to put it in context. God had carried the “best and the brightest” from Jerusalem to the Babylonian exile. It wasn’t a random “Oh, bad things happen to good people” situation. It was God sending the delinquents off to the military academy to teach them some discipline and manners.

And God wasn’t saying, “Say you’re sorry and that you’ll behave, and everything will be sunshine and lollypops.” They were to be there for 70 years. The only people going into exile who would likely return to Israel would be the babies and children. Instead, He tells them to settle in and make nice with the people who conquered them – praying for them!

Keep in mind that they had been being told, by people who claimed to speak for God, that none of this was going to happen. God said those people had been lying. And now another person speaking for God is telling them to get used to their plight and that it’s all good because God has plans for their welfare? To give them a future and hope? Everyone keep a lookout for Batman because clearly, Jeremiah is the Joker.

I don’t mean to be irreverent here, but the point is that the reassurance that God knows the plans He has and that they are plans for welfare and not calamity must have strained the credulity of the Jews. That doesn’t mean that His statement wasn’t true, and in seventy years, He did take at least some Jews back to the promised land.

God can have plans for our welfare that require that we suffer through what doesn’t appear that it could have anything to do with our welfare. We generally get stuck in the small picture details. Our lives shrink down to the shape of the source of our pain and its source. It’s nearly impossible to see things from a different perspective. But we have examples: Joseph, Desmond Tutu, Anwar Sadat, and Adolph Hitler all spent time in prison, and Joseph, Tutu, and Sadat all emerged from the ordeal better men, while Hitler emerged a worse man. It depends on how you approach the hard time. Do you use it to build or to tear down? Will you trust God to do the impossible? 

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