Maybe, as you awakened this morning, you discovered your self in a spot you desperately wish to go away.
Perhaps you moved right here for college or work (or your partner’s college or work), however your coronary heart nonetheless lives within the place you left. You consider all of the household and buddies and acquainted comforts again there, and also you battle to think about how right here might ever really feel like dwelling.
Or perhaps you’ve gotten been right here all of your life, however for a while now you’ve been itching for elsewhere. You are feeling sure by the slim limits of a city you understand too effectively. You’ve traced each crease and nook of those streets; nothing appears left to find.
Or perhaps, most painful of all, the houses and timber and shops of your present place every day remind you of all you’ve misplaced. These halls have been as soon as full of laughter, and these sidewalks with the completely happy patter of kids’s toes. However for any of a thousand causes, that life is gone now, and the bottom is haunted by the ghosts of higher days.
Perhaps you’ll go away sometime. Perhaps you’ll transfer again dwelling, or get removed from dwelling, or begin contemporary elsewhere with out reminiscences. However for now, for at present, you reside on this place you wish to go away.
To the Exiles in Babylon
The story of Scripture is, in some methods, a narrative of going. In creation, God supposed Adam and Eve to fill not simply Eden however the entire earth (Genesis 1:27–28). In redemption, God spreads his kingdom as Abraham goes from Ur (Genesis 12:1–3), Israel from Egypt (Exodus 3:10–12), the apostles from Jerusalem (Matthew 28:18–20), Paul and Barnabas from Antioch (Acts 13:1–3).
But alongside these memorable goings are much less memorable, however nonetheless essential, stayings. Abraham could have gone to Canaan, however Isaac stayed there. The Spirit carried Paul to Ephesus after which past, however the identical Paul charged Timothy to “stay at Ephesus” (1 Timothy 1:3). And in a single exceptional story, when God’s individuals longed to depart the place they have been, and when some self-appointed “prophets” have been saying “go,” God stated “keep”:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all of the exiles whom I’ve despatched into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Construct homes and stay in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have little kids. (Jeremiah 29:4–6)
Among the many world’s undesired locations, Babylon would have sat close to the highest for a devoted Israelite. Babylon was a step backward. Babylon was not a part of the plan. Babylon was not a spot to calm down and lift kids. However Babylon, this place they longed to depart, was now dwelling for seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10).
We will not be Israelites dwelling in Babylon, however Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles nonetheless speaks to those that discover themselves caught in an undesired land.
Planted by a Grasp Gardener
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all of the exiles whom I’ve despatched into exile . . . (Jeremiah 29:4)
The primary line of Jeremiah’s letter provides one thing of a Godward shock. To any attentive observer, Nebuchadnezzar, not God, had despatched Israel into exile (Jeremiah 29:1). Nonetheless, Jeremiah says, behind the satisfaction and insanity of Babylon’s king, God himself had despatched Israel into exile. The Israelites discovered themselves in Babylon, finally, as a result of God’s hidden hand had taken them there.
How usually we want an identical reminder once we get up removed from the house of our wishes. For no matter circumstances introduced us right here — a job supply, an pressing household want, our personal delivery, even our personal misguided judgment — a hand past our personal has been at work. We stay the place we stay, finally, as a result of God has despatched us right here, at the very least for at present. And the providential hand of God by no means strikes with out goal.
Samuel Rutherford, the good Puritan letter author, as soon as spoke of God as gardener, himself as plant:
The good Grasp-gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in an exquisite windfall, together with his personal hand . . . planted me right here, the place, by his grace, on this a part of his Winery, I develop. . . . And right here I’ll abide, until the good Grasp of the Winery suppose match to transplant me. (Letters of Samuel Rutherford, 93)
Later, when Rutherford was confined in Aberdeen and forbidden from all public ministry, he wrote of dwelling in “Christ’s palace at Aberdeen.” He knew that the identical Christ “who despatched me to the West and South [to his prior pastoral calling], sendeth me additionally to the North [to confinement in Aberdeen]” (119). What if we too noticed our current place as a backyard and a palace — not as a result of the soil feels wealthy or the furnishings appears elegant, however as a result of our Father the Gardener has planted us right here, and Christ the King dwells right here?
We don’t stay the place we stay alone, neither is our current place the results of mere circumstances we are able to see. We have now a Grasp gardener, a gift Christ, even in a spot that looks like exile.
Souls with Packed Containers
Construct homes and stay in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have little kids. (Jeremiah 29:5–6)
An air of stressed expectation blew among the many exiles in Babylon. Some claiming to be prophets spoke of an imminent return to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 29:8–9). The considered going dwelling so quickly tugged at many, conserving their roots above floor. They slept clothed and with suitcases packed. They refused to behave as if they might stay lengthy in Babylon.
However they might. Seventy years would cross earlier than God’s individuals would come dwelling (Jeremiah 29:10). So, God tells them to construct and stay, plant and eat, marry and guardian. Settle into this place you wish to go away. Sink your roots into this soil, arduous as it could really feel, and dare to imagine that fruit can develop even right here.
“Sink your roots into this soil, arduous as it could really feel, and dare to imagine that fruit can develop even right here.”
Our personal wishes to depart, change, transfer can tempt us to equally stay evenly upon the soil, our soul a tumbleweed moderately than a tree. Stacks of containers nonetheless packed could line the partitions of our hearts as we hesitate to settle into this place, hoping as a substitute we would go away quickly.
In our case, in fact, we actually would possibly go away quickly; as far as we all know, God has not given us a seventy-year sentence right here. However might or not it’s that our reluctance to deal with this place as dwelling retains us from discovering right here the house we might? May our need for elsewhere turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, a spade that regularly digs up the bottom and retains us from gripping the soil right here?
Once I was in seminary, a classmate spoke of his spouse’s hesitation to embellish their residence, understanding they could stay there just for a yr or two. He instructed her in response, “Let’s put some nail holes within the wall.” Let’s unpack the containers. Let’s construct and plant. Let’s make this place, nevertheless undesirable, as a lot a house as we are able to make it. And perhaps, within the course of, we’ll discover extra dwelling right here than we imagined.
Keep and Make Disciples
Search the welfare of the town the place I’ve despatched you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf. (Jeremiah 29:7)
Exiled individuals, misplaced in a overseas land and pining for dwelling, would possibly understandably concentrate on a small set of priorities: Defend your loved ones. Make a dwelling. Discover some small measure of happiness the place you may. However God referred to as his individuals to look farther and better, past the partitions of self and residential, to “search the welfare of the town the place I’ve despatched you.” Do good, even in Babylon. Search the welfare of the place you wish to go away. Pray for its peace.
The command brings to thoughts a scene from the Gospels, the place a person previously demonized begs to comply with Jesus, his deliverer (Luke 8:38). Certainly he longed to be close to the one who had restored him to his proper thoughts (Luke 8:35); maybe he additionally longed to be free from the place of his former distress. However Jesus, after telling so many individuals to comply with him, tells this man to not: “Return to your private home, and declare how a lot God has performed for you” (Luke 8:39). Go dwelling, keep the place you might be, and communicate into this place the welfare of the gospel. And so he did (Luke 8:39).
Wherever we stay, there are individuals on our block, in our neighborhood, and all through our metropolis who want to listen to how a lot God has performed for us, and the way a lot he would possibly do for them. Little question, individuals elsewhere want to listen to the identical; therefore Jesus’s name to go (Matthew 28:19). However like the person in Luke 8, we could have to see that this place, although maybe full of unwelcome reminiscences, has fields ripe for harvest — and we are those to work them.
Within the depths of our need to depart, we could have adopted a set of small functions, at the very least functionally: Preserve the youngsters completely happy. Get by way of at present. Do your work and discover a while for relaxation. However Jesus provides us one other goal that may rework what looks like a cracked and barren floor right into a discipline ready for harvest: “Declare how a lot God has performed for you.”
Exiles Until Heaven
To all of the exiles . . . (Jeremiah 29:4)
As painful because the phrase exile could have sounded to the Israelites in Babylon, the phrase welcomed them right into a actuality they might have struggled to recollect at dwelling: God, not Jerusalem, was their true dwelling place (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 90:1). That they had at all times been “strangers and sojourners,” even at dwelling (Leviticus 25:23). So, although the phrase exile was a sting and a thorn, it was additionally a present.
“Someday quickly, we’ll get up within the place we’ve got at all times longed for, and we’ll stay there without end.”
In Christ, we too are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), even when we stay in a spot we love. Those that really feel like exiles, then, have a sure benefit on this world: their sense of homelessness every day reminds them who they are surely.
Each morning we get up in a home we don’t like, we are able to bear in mind the room in God’s home with our identify written on the door (John 14:2). Each time we drive by way of a metropolis we wish to go away, we are able to sit up for the town “whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). Each time we go to sleep feeling removed from dwelling, we are able to guarantee ourselves that we’re certainly removed from dwelling, but additionally that house is coming shortly (Revelation 22:20).
Someday quickly, we’ll get up within the place we’ve got at all times longed for, and we’ll stay there without end. However for now, pricey Christian exile, belief the knowledge of your Grasp gardener. Unpack the containers. Keep and make disciples. And love this place you wish to go away.
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