Making Plans

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 hope and a future."

I'm going to be really blunt in this post. I have had the hardest time with that verse for as long as I can remember. I hear it and I have cynical, skeptical thoughts. I criticize the one who quotes it, saying "They're taking it out of context. That verse was written to exiles in Babylon; it was meant for a specific people at a specific time."

I read it last night and those thoughts started again. "It's so overused, it's lost its meaning, and frankly, it doesn't seem true." I was pretty honest with God, telling Him that I just can't believe it. I thought about the hard things I've gone through. I thought about the devastations some of my family and friends have endured. Their loved ones dying at a young age. Incurable cancer. What do those things have to do with a future and a hope? "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you"? Dying seems pretty harmful to me.

So last night I read it with my usual frame of mind, wondering why I was even in Jeremiah 29. (You hear "Jeremiah 29" and automatically think of verse 11, right?) But as I read it, everything changed. I LOVE how God speaks through His word.

I heard His thoughts in my own: "This verse isn't about you, you're right. But it's not about the exiles either."

He stopped there, but it hit me so hard. That verse is about Him and his character. He showed me that even if those words weren't directed at me specifically, that is what He is like. He is a God who makes plans for His people. That verse is not about the exiles and their futures, their hope...it's about the kind of God who plans and dreams and wants what's best for His people, who sends a message to them in their exile, when they're furthest away from any type of normalcy or safety or comfort. It's about the kind of God who wants us to seek Him and find Him, the kind of God who promises He will hear when we cry out.

Yeah, so that passage doesn't have a "Dear Shannon" in front of it. But He said those words and meant them. That's who He is.

If we could read the Bible while remembering that God is the main character, not us, it would mean what it's supposed to mean. It's all about Him and who He is. Jesus didn't just come to die for us; he says in John 18:37, "For this reason I came into the world, and for this I was born, to testify to the truth..." He came to clear up our notions of God, to show us the truth of who He really is. He showed that with His life.

God said those things about a group of people one time, but He doesn't change. His heart is the same. He's got us in His hands. And we've got to realize that although circumstances may look bleak and hopeless in this fallen world, He can and will use them for good and bring us forth as gold. Even if our hope and future pertains to heaven and not on this earth, that's a hope and future that we don't deserve and is more than enough.