Last night I had a dreadful, terrible night. It was one of those nights that went wrong in the evening and stayed wrong when I went to bed, and so I lay there with swirling thoughts of condemnation. I felt dreadful. It was terrible.
It was one of those times when I thought so much had improved in my heart and I was flung back into the reality that I am still so very much depraved and crooked and wrong and that there is so much I cannot do to fix myself. I felt terrible. It was dreadful.
I didn't sleep until after 2 and forgot to turn off my 6:30 alarm. Soon the kids started coming like energetic waves.
I picked up my phone. My morning verse of the day read like this - Jeremiah 29:11 "'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.'"
This verse hangs in my kitchen. It's a popular one. We like the idea of God knowing his plan for us, of God prospering us, of God protecting us, and of a future hope. I like that too. It sounds really nice and not dreadful or terrible.
But we miss a really important part. This verse is part of a whole of chapter 29. We don't read the whole story and miss the big picture. This verse is spoken by God to his people who have been carried away into exile. They have been carried away from all that they've known and loved into a new, strange land. They are prisoners. If that's not dreadful and terrible, I don't know what is.
But what does God tell them to do? He tells them to embrace the exile. What?! Embrace the exile?! He tells them to build houses, to settle down, to plant gardens, to marry, to seek peace and to pray for the city of their exile. Doesn't that sound like they're supposed to be joyful in trial and to love their enemies? What?! Moreover, they're to embrace this dreadful, terrible time, as if it's okay?
God then casually comments that after 70 years, the exile will end. 70 years. My heart sinks.
And this is when the verse comes in. He tells them this, that after 70 years "'I will come to you and fulfill my gracious 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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.'"
God doesn't simply pile promises and goodness and prosperity upon us. He wants us to look for him, to cry out for him, to pray to him...with all our hearts. And he promises to be found, to find us, to bring us back.
These last years, I've felt very much like an exile. My rug of comfort has been pulled from under my feet. I'm faced daily with my husband's chronic pain, the uncertainty of my daughter's life, a blurry future, and the plans to move overseas are on an indefinite hold.
Sometimes I feel shackled. And sometimes I have dreadful, terrible nights like last night where it all feels hopelessly impossible and I know I'm terribly inadequate. I'm stuck doing what I didn't plan to do and going nowhere, at least from a lost perspective.
How thankful I am for the hope of this morning and God's steadfast love which never ends-with new mercies each morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). I am exhausted, but I embrace the fact that God is working through all of this mess. He uses me when I am nothing and am not at all who and where I want to be. He tells me to embrace it, to live in it, to seek him with all my heart.
I'm starting to understand how it is he takes our ashes, mourning and despair and turns them to beauty, joy and praise (Isaiah 61:3). He speaks through us in the dreadful, terrible times and calls us "oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor" (Is. 61:3). Without that, I couldn't go on.
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