Displaced

"I know the plans I have for you, declares Jehovah, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope," Jeremiah 29:11.

Context: Jeremiah writes a letter from God to a broken, beaten, displaced people, captives in a foreign land. God gives hope in the promise to restore their homeland, to bring prosperity. God says to live out their lives with sure expectation of that return. He says restoration will happen in 70 years. (And, of course, it did. God said, and God did!) Think: Twenty-year olds newly married in captivity, become liberated ninety-year olds. Their seventy-year old children, yes, their 20-year old great-grandchildren (!), of whom they did not then dream became the included inheritors of the promise. God's ever at work creating better than we imagined. Kingdom of heaven.

We stop looking at current affairs for hope; with a brother or sister, today, we live out God's sure promise of wholeness. And, in this present hopeless world, we testify hopefully, together, to the real love of Christ Jesus, our Lord. And we give thanks.