A Promise for the Bereft

Last week, when I sat down to write, I started crying instead.

With each new headline, with each new horror descending on our country and world, with each new hate-filled comment spewed from people I know and love, with each new challenge thrown at our family, I felt utterly defeated by hopelessness.

What words could I offer others when I didn’t even know what to tell myself?

So I took my Bible outside and sat in the sun.

Lord, I prayed, what do you say to a world—to hearts—that are burning and broken?

*

He witnessed the slow, painful, gruesome destruction of his beloved people and homeland. He tried to speak words of Life to them, tried to point his people back to the Truth, and they beat him and tried to kill him—even his own family.

And so Jeremiah wept. He lamented. He despaired and wrestled with God and saw Babylon utterly destroy Israel.

“There is no cure for my grief,” he wrote, “My heart breaks for what I see and hear. From within, a dark and cold hurt arises. From without, I am strangled by the horror of it all.”

*

Our world has rapidly and radically changed in less than six months. The ground we walk is shifting, sinking sand.

And while we’ve been slowly boiling towards this point for years, in many ways it feels like we’ve been suddenly thrust into a roiling world that burns and sears our hearts and minds with the calamity surrounding us.

It’s as if we went to sleep in our homes and woke up in Babylon. And it’s left many of us feeling despondent. Displaced. Hurting.

*

Shortly after the first Israelites were exported to Babylon, the Lord tells Jeremiah to write a letter to them.

And so God, through Jeremiah, tells the bereft Israelites to build houses and make homes. To plant gardens and eat their bounty. To marry and have children; to find wives for their sons and give their daughters in marriage.

He tells them to live their lives, to get comfortable, to put down roots and make this place of captivity their home because they will be here a long time.

And He tells them to pursue and pray for peace and welfare for Babylon—for the hostile and oppressive people they are now entangled with. Because if Babylon has peace, so will they.

Only after this, after telling them they will be here for generations, does He say this:

“For I know the plans I have for you; plans for shalom and not calamity—to give you a future and a hope.”

*

Shalom is one of my favorite Hebrew words. There is no English equivalent. It means “completeness, soundness, welfare, peace.” It is a prayer, a desire; it’s a state of being, a beautiful blessing.

No matter the external circumstances swirling around us, God offers us completeness, soundness, welfare, and peace in Him. And it is from these things that He gives us a future, that we find hope.

These are the plans that God has for His bereft, displaced, hurting people.

*

Ever since we moved in to our current house, Brian and I have prayed for God to give us a vision for our land—for how we can best use the resources He’s given us. We’ve dreamed of towering pines lining our driveway. We’ve imagined having portions of our yard become forest again, of clearing other spaces to make room for gardens and maybe even animals.

We’ve talked about what it would be like to build cabins and create more trails and offer what we have as a sanctuary to weary souls.

But lately I’ve found it harder to dream about the future because the present can be so overwhelming.

*

Sitting in the sun, my Bible open on my lap, I prayed. Because I could feel a visceral fear of the calamity that will crash into our country two months from now.

I grieved for the horrors the headlines screamed—from the obvious political tumult to the natural disasters wreaking havoc across our country and world to the global cancer of child sex-trafficking.

I grieved because so much pain and fear and hopelessness and desperation and despair rule our hearts and world.

I grieved because this is not the world I want my children to inherit.

And in the middle of my lament, I felt Him fill my heart with His shalom through the words He spoke to Jeremiah all those years ago:

“Make homes and plant gardens and eat the food your grow there.”

“Marry and have children and find spouses for them. During these years of captivity, let your families grow and not die out.”

“Pursue the peace and welfare of the city where I sent you. Pray for Babylon because if it has peace, you will live in peace.”

“For I know the plans I have for you, plans for peace, not calamity, to give you a future and a hope—never forget that.”

*

Last week, the seeds for our future garden arrived, and Brian and I finally decided where we wanted to put it.

We also discussed where to put chickens next year and eagerly started outlining the pasture for horses.

And this past weekend—at a gracious invitation of a friend—Brian, my dad, and I dug up and transported 42 six-foot-tall pine and spruce trees. Then we replanted them along our driveway and in our front yard.

It will take another 15 or so years before the pines tower into the ones of our dreams. Until the evergreens mature into a forest in our front yard. We still have to clear out and level the ground for the garden next spring. We have a chicken coop to plan and build, and we have a few more years of getting the land ready for horses.

But we are dreaming. We are planning.

We are building a home and putting down deep, deep roots into something more real than the craziness swirling around us.

Because when we choose to abide in the One who fills our souls with His shalom—no matter where we are or what is going on around us—we can look toward the future with anticipation.

We can make homes and grow our families and pursue peace and put our roots down deep into an unshakeable Kingdom.

And as we open our hands and lean in to the promise of His shalom, each action we take becomes a beautifully defiant act of Hope.

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