“For I know the plans I have for you…”We have all read Jeremiah 29:11. Some of you probably don’t even have to look at the verse to know what it says.
We have used it to cling to when we face the unknown. Or when a child is graduating, it is used on half of the graduation cards. We like to think that we are here, and God has a plan, and his plan is for us to prosper. It is a great verse for looking forward to the future.
But how many of you, as Paul Harvey used to say “know the rest of the story?”
The verses leading up to 29:11 tell the story of the exile from Jerusalem and being sent to live in Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah is talking to the displaced Jewish community and telling them to make this place their new home.
This foreign, unfamiliar place should be considered home.
Have sons and daughters, he says. Jeremiah tells them….Do not decrease in size just because you are exiled, but instead take root in this new place. If this new place prospers, then you too will prosper.
Only after their lives have been completely uprooted and turned upside down does the prophet tell them that God has a plan.
THEN, he tells them that they too must take action for this plan to work. They must work to prosper in this new place.
Once they have toiled and worked in this new place they have been exiled in, THEN they can call on him and He will hear them.
Jeremiah 29:13 says ““You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
The year of 2016 was a rough year. I lost my father and my husband in the same week. I felt like the Jewish people being uprooted from their homes and given a new life. This was not the life that I expected, nor was it the life that Jeremiah 29:11 so lovingly promises – if that is the only part of the story you read.
Now the calendar has turned. The new year has come. I woke up on January 1, 2017 and realized that I am in my Babylon, and now it is time to prosper. It is time to seek God with all my heart. To trust that there is a plan, and to know that I too must be present, I must listen, I must trust, and I must act. Only then will God’s plan for me to prosper succeed.
Bless you!