I had grown up in church and thought I knew who God was. I thought I understood how life was going to look. I was baptized at 9 and I was a good kid. I was 18 when I had my first heart surgery and it SHOOK my world. It’s a story for another day. I was angry at God and it was the reason I began to doubt that He was real, let alone good.

When I started to come back to Jesus, I began writing Jeremiah 29:11 on all of my binders. I had googled something along the lines of “encouraging Bible verses” and this one offered a story of ease and happiness. It was a constant reminder that God was going to do good things in my life. These trials and hardships I was going through were temporary and it will be good soon. “If it’s not good, He’s not done”, right? It makes a promise that God will make the problems go away and life will be easy some day.

Okay. Okay. It’s not really. It does promise goodness. It does promise God is going to prosper… Judah. See the book of Jeremiah is… dark. The people of Judah had lost their minds. They had idols, false religion, self-reliance. They had cast God out from their lives. They turned away from the living water and even built two cisterns symbolizing their turn from God as their sustenance and focus. There were false prophets and empty worship. God sends Jeremiah to warn these people of God’s impending wrath for somewhere around FORTY YEARS. 

Babylon was an evil empire. They were, well, less than righteous. Jeremiah warns them that God will turn them over to Babylon and allow them to destroy Judah if they don’t change their ways. They wanted to be rescued and God asked them over and over to repent. Instead of repenting, they continued to remain wholly unfaithful. The warnings get brutal, enough to make your stomach churn. And yet they still chose themselves.

Don’t get me started on Jeremiah. Poor guy was mocked and beaten, imprisoned, thrown into a muddy cistern. That’s enough to make me quit! He was labeled a traitor.

It all finally comes to fruition. Babylon comes. Judah is destroyed. A select few are spared the agonizing death and destruction BUT they are captives. Even Jeremiah is taken with the captives. Jeremiah writes a letter. It is a soft reminder of hope. See, for seventy years, they would be stripped of everything they knew. Their understanding of worship and living like Christ was stripped down and swept away in the destruction. The identities that were tied to Judah sent people into what I’m sure is the equivalency of an identity crisis. They could no longer live like who they used to be.

Then came the letter. Jeremiah writes a letter telling them to build gardens, get married, have kids. Basically, go and make the nation blessed. Exile is not the punishment, but an opportunity. It was a reminder that God still had good plans for them, but they have to loose everything they know to reap the fullness of the blessing. But go and live like Christ followers. Go and be an example. Come seek God in the middle. It may have been the consequence, but God used it for refinement. God does promise justice. The evil act does not go unpunished.

So why do I tell you this?

We are in exile. This is not our home. There is an eternity waiting for us at the end of life on earth. This world is full of evil. This world is full of trials and heartbreak and sickness and pain. Our only goal should be to love God and then love people. To go and make disciples. Transparently, most of us know what it’s like to feel like we’re loosing everything we know. We question if God is still with us and we loose our identity when our world crumbles around us.

Well, I have good news. While this letter was not written to a modern day us, God’s character is still the same. There IS a hope and a good future when we are willing to surrender everything we know and pursue God. This life is not easy, but God is not surprised. The fire has a purpose. Be careful here. Not every trial is a consequence, but it is an opportunity. When we do things apart from God, our own attempts of happiness and fulness can come crumbling down. It’s temporary. Pride can creep in. Sin has a foothold. It is fragile and self seeking. What God gives us, does not change based on the circumstance. Man can’t take it away. It’s a love and a peace that is not pushed and pulled by the waves of life. It’s security. It’s identity. It’s worship in the exile. It’s meaning to this hard life…

Under The Sun.