Jeremiah 29.1-9
This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the
surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people
Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King
Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and
Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from
Jerusalem.)… This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I
carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Because of their disobedience, the people of God were carried by God from their homeland into
exile. Eugene Peterson summarizes this dislocation:
There was a great emptiness within, individually and socially. Their religion was
mocked. There worship to God was pilloried. Their memories of God’s acts of salvation
became nostalgic and remote. On a national scale, they experienced homelessness. The
had been wrenched from their homeland in a violent way. The change was sudden.
Nothing was assured or certain. Most of them never got used to things in Babylon, the
country of exile…they were not feeling uprooted from their land but uprooted from their
God. There was not only the feeling of being a stranger outwardly but a sense of being a
stranger inwardly, in their souls, their hearts. They experienced exile deeply and
pervasively.
You may not have been taken by force from your home, or stripped of your culture, or become a
stranger in a strange land, but it could be that you know what it’s like to have things change so
drastically that you can’t experience rest.
The people of God lost everything. They even lost their desire to worship and sing.
Psalm 137 characterizes God’s people this way.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
God hears His people. He sees their pain. He knows their suffering and meets them in the midst
of it. He says,
“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.”
Notice what God doesn’t say. He doesn’t say overthrow the government. He doesn’t call His
people to live in a state of national mourning. He doesn’t say blame your friends or your
enemies. I hear Jeremiah say, “This is where we are and the sooner we accept the situation and believe that somehow, some way God is at work we’ll know a rest like we’ve never experienced back in Israel.”
I hear Jeremiah call God’s people to create beauty in exile.
Marry and have sons and daughters. Seek peace and work hard. Give yourself fully to your jobs.
Jeremiah says seek the Shalom, the wholeness, the welfare of the place where you are living and
don’t isolate or separate from others. Seek the Shalom of Babylon, because by seeking the
Shalom of Babylon you will indeed find the Shalom in yourselves.
Jeremiah says, sing.
Worship leader Michael Card said, “All true songs of worship are born in the wilderness of
suffering.” After 70 years of captivity, the Israelites returned home with songs of true
worship—for they are changed. Psalm 126 is their homecoming soundtrack.
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Restore our fortunes, LORD,
like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you
will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16.33
Prayer: Let’s pray this version of the Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Not because accepting
them will make my life more pleasant. Not because, you know, I can't control them
anyway. Not because stoic acceptance is a good tool for emotional management. Not
because I'm just trying to muddle through until I get to the end of my life.
But because the God of the cross is also the God of the resurrection. Because the dream I
have to die to will be ultimately eternally replaced by an infinitely better dream. Because
the heart that will be pierced by a sword will be remade into a heart of flesh and joy.
Because the people I love are infinitely better off in God's hands than they would be in mine. Because this is my Father's world, and he shines in all that's fair.
When that rogue wave comes, and it will, when I lose money, or a dream, or my heart,
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change because, although
weeping lasts for a night, joy comes in the morning.
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