Jeremiah 29:4-7, 11 (NIV)

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."

"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 a hope and a future."

Many of us feel like exiles today. Not from a geographical place, but from a way of life we once knew — a time when neighbors who disagreed could still talk to one another, when strong opinions could sit side by side in the same church pew without contempt, when the goal of public life seemed to be solving problems rather than defeating people. We look around at the world we inhabit now and we barely recognize it. Something has been lost, and we feel that loss deeply.

The children of Israel knew that feeling. When the Babylonians came and took them from Jerusalem, they didn't just lose their homes. They lost their temple, their city, the whole framework of what it meant to be God's people in God's place. The world they had known was simply gone. And the false prophets of the day told them what we sometimes tell ourselves: don't worry, this won't last. Things will go back to the way they were.

Jeremiah delivered a harder and more honest message. This is where you are, he told them. Stop waiting to go home. The path forward is not backward.

And then God said something extraordinary through the prophet. He didn't tell the exiles to resist Babylon, or to withdraw from it, or to wait it out in righteous isolation. He told them to plant gardens. Build houses. Raise their children. And — most remarkably — to seek the shalom of the city where they found themselves. That Hebrew word means more than peace. It means the full flourishing, the wholeness, the welfare of the place. Pray for it, God said. Because your flourishing is bound up with its flourishing. You cannot thrive in a place you have given up on.

That is a word for us today. Whatever we have lost, and however we came to lose it, we are called to the same vocation the exiles were given. Not to retreat. Not to rage. Not to wait for things to go back to the way they were. But to seek the shalom of the place where God has put us — our neighborhoods, our communities, our congregations, our nation. To pray for them. To invest in them. To refuse the temptation of contempt.

The exile was not the end of God's purposes for Israel. It turned out to be a calling. And God's word to them is his word to us: I know the plans I have for you. Plans for hope. Plans for a future.

We are not abandoned here. We are sent.

Prayer

Our Father, in a time when so much feels unfamiliar and so much has been lost, help us to hear your call to seek the peace and flourishing of the places and people around us. Remind us that you have not abandoned us to this moment — you have called us to it. Amen.

This devotional was written and read by Jim Stovall.

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