Thought for the day – Saturday 6 June
Dear All
Everyone likes good news. We all like to hear something that is potentially trouble-free, something that we can look forward to without worry and anxiety. We all need to hear comforting words of hope, especially if we are going through a difficult time or are fearful of an uncertain future.
Sometimes the future looks really bleak and we can, and often do, experience times of loneliness, even though surrounded by family and friends. It is not always easy to speak about and share our feelings, so we stoically endure ‘hoping against hope’. Many people today, too many actually, suffer from all kinds of mental disorders, and such illnesses are thankfully much better recognised, understood and treated. Continuing and increasing stress can result in us having sleepless nights and severe disruption to our normal sense of well being.
For many during this lockdown, ‘breaking point’ has arrived or is not very far away. We all need someone or something to help us cope until we can resume our normal lives, hardly recognisable from what they were a few short months ago. We need hope. Our nation day by day, ‘tunes in’ to news bulletins hoping to hear something comforting from our political leaders, hoping that we will be able to do a little bit more of the things we enjoy and get back to normal. People are anxious about their jobs, their health, their families, their pensions for example and want and need reassurance that things will get better. They will!
As each day passes and with us all observing the necessary restrictions things are looking more hopeful. God-given hope in our lives is what sustains and comforts us. Hope is not merely wishful thinking, it is something more profound, it is something that can be given, received, lost and restored. It is God who gives us such hope to share with one another in what we do and in what we say.
The Epistle of Jeremiah was written to the Jewish Exiles in Babylon around 540 BC after their deportation. Everything for them looked bleak as they tried to come to terms with their new way of life. The language, customs and practices were all unfamiliar and foreign to them, ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?’
It was against this background that Jeremiah wrote his letter. This letter is historical. Yesterday I mentioned that some parts of the bible were in parabolic form, today’s passage is not, it is instead, actual, factual historical documentation and is addressed to real people in real-time and in a real situation. It is God’s word to his people through his Prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah’s message from the Lord encouraged the people to seek the peace and prosperity of the city to ‘which he was sending them’. They were to do their best in every way and have full and meaningful lives until God returned them home after seventy years has passed.
God’s message through Jeremiah was one of genuine hope as the people are told that God had not forgotten them and that he has plans for their future. With this reassuring message, the people could live and work in hope for better times ahead.
Although our situation is not the same as those in exile so long ago, our feelings and emotions are. We can be happy, despondent, excited and so on. Like the Israelites, our God is the same and the hope that he gives is the same. Like them, we too can look forward as our God of history, our God of mystery our God of majesty fulfils his plans for us and in us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer.
Today I ask you to think/meditate on these things.
God bless you!
Jim
JEREMIAH 29: 1-11
This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said:
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.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place.
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 hope and a future
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