Tuesday Thought -- January 17, 2012

Good Morning Friends,

“This is what the LORD says:  ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, 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.’” (Jeremiah 29:10-14)

Seventy years is the time God had decreed that His people would be in captivity in Babylon.  Why 70 years?  For reasons only God knows.  God set that time before the people ever were defeated by Nebuchadnezer.  At the end of the 70 years, God promised to bring them back home to the land of Israel.

The 70 years would be a difficult time for the people of Judah.  They would be living as an oppressed people, pressed into the service of foreigners.  But the difficult time was not to be the end for them.  God’s plans did not end with their oppression.  God’s plans never end with His children in pain and suffering.  God’s plans always contain a future.  God’s plans always contain a hope.  God’s plans are never designed to hurt, always designed for the ultimate good of His purposes and of His children.

That’s easy to forget in the midst of the pain.  It would have been easy for the people of Judah to forget in the midst of their pain.  That’s why God had Jeremiah speak these words.  I would think these words would have been memorized by every Jew in Babylon and repeated daily.  A time was coming when things would change.  God would bring them home to Him and home to their own land.

I know that this world often brings pain – deep and difficult seasons.  In the midst of the pain, don’t forget the future, don’t forget the hope, don’t forget we’re going home!  Here’s a promise from Jesus to you and me that we all would do well to memorize and repeat daily:  “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:3)

His, by Grace,

Steve