For surely I know
the plans I have for you,
says the Lord,
plans for your welfare
and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.

– Jeremiah 29:11 (NRSV)

Uncertain Plans

If you had asked me  a month ago what my plans were for this summer, I would have rattled off a list of events and vacations. Our family was planning two big parties, one for my son and his high school graduation, another for our youngest who was planning on spending her junior year of high school abroad. There in the final week of May I had excitedly put down the dates to pack up my eldest from college, bring her back home and quickly pack her up again for her summer job as a camp counselor. Just a month ago I was on the phone with my mother talking about plans for family reunion… and then, everything, seemingly overnight, seemed to get uprooted, stalled, cancelled.

It’s unsettling to live during this time of uncertainty. If there was only an “end date” in sight I think I might be able to cope in a different manner. And yet, here I am, along with you,  questioning, wondering, waiting. 

This passage from Jeremiah serves as a good reminder to me, during these times, that the presence of God is still upon us. Jeremiah is sometimes referred to as “the weeping prophet” who was called to ministry during a time of unrest, destruction and uncertainty for the people of Jerusalem.  The Israelites were in exile and asking the question, “When shall we return?” They sing out together Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon—

    there we sat down and there we wept

    when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there

    we hung up our harps.

For there our captors

    asked us for songs,

and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song

    in a foreign land?

They had been made mute in their grief and sorrow. No longer could they even sing to their Lord.

Other prophets were telling the people that this time would be soon at hand, and then Jeremiah speaks out and says, in verse 10 that this will not happen for seventy years. Seventy years!! That’s two generations of people who will live in exile. This is not at all what the Israelites wanted to hear!   They wanted to be told that their suffering was going to end. Instead, God’s plan was for them to stay right where they were.

It is into the midst of this uncertainty at the future that Jeremiah speaks, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” 

This was not a blessing and a promise of a life no longer filled with suffering or uncertainty. Here, instead, is a greater promise given, and it is this – here, in this place, at this time,  the Lord will give us hope in the midst of our uncertainty. In the midst of difficulty there is a future being born in the hope and promise of God. With this promise before us, we are called to trust in to the future and realize God’s precious hope for all of us.

– Pastor Lauren J. Wrightsman

In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 

We can not always see clearly what that future is, or what the blessing is in the moment. When the prophet Jeremiah spoke these words to the ancient Israelites, they were in the exile in Babylon, far from home. But Jeremiah was calling them to live into the future that was yet to be – Find a place to live. Plant a garden. Raise a family. Even in this strange new place,  remember the things you did before, the things that made you distinctively who you are. Make the best of it by keeping faith in this ambiguous, uncertain world. May we each continue to discover who we are and who God made us to be, so we can do it on purpose. Amen

Thanks be to God!