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Have you ever spent a season of your life feeling as though you were in exile? If you considered the chapters of your span, there might be a stretch you could look back on and remember being confused. 

If your life has been relatively smooth thus far, you may not relate with this notion. Maybe things have gone basically as you had hoped, or at least without any disorienting uproots. If that is your case, your best response would be to give thanks to God. 

For the rest of us, Jeremiah’s message might be compelling work. I can recall personally at least one beginning to a ministry chapter that felt like exile. For about a year, I had known that my time of service where I was would be winding down. A new pastor had come in and been given the power of God. His jealousy of my being long established took a toll. 

Maybe you have asked God, “How did I get here?” or “What did I do to deserve this?” Perhaps you prayed to God, “Why have you left me here?” or something like, “How long, o Lord?” If you have lived something like that, then you may have felt that somehow life had exiled you to an unfamiliar place. 

If you want a decent core sample, then reading in chapters one, eight, thirty-one and fifty-two might be good. Jeremiah was raised about three miles north of Jerusalem. He started his prophetic ministry around 627 BC, as King Josiah of Judah reigned. Josiah’s grandfather had swung Judah away from dedication to Yahweh God to a more polytheistic and idolatrous worship. 

Josiah then reformed those excesses and returned Jerusalem to God. Evidently this was too little, too late. The Babylonian takeover happened in 606 BC and people were largely dispersed to go and live now in Babylon. Jeremiah himself was apparently taken as far away as Egypt, where he later died. 

Predictably, Jeremiah found his prophecy from God pitted against a courtly prophet named Hananiah. Just as in our time, the people would have to choose which voice they would listen to. Because they had been neglectful of God, recognizing God’s voice was tougher than it should have been. 

Jeremiah wrote a series of confessions relatively early in his book, found in chapters 11 through 20. If you want to hear from the heart of this prophet stuck in the middle, this is a poignant opportunity. 

In return, he also portrays a God who has remained loyal to those who had stayed faithful and loyal themselves. Correspondingly, God is hurt at the infidelity the people have largely displayed in past generations. His marriage imagery portrays the people as an adulterous people who have married another man, only to beg to come back. 

Jeremiah is clear in chapter one that lasting damage to the relationship has been done. Now, an enemy from “the north” will be allowed to come in and ravage Judah. 

For our purposes, we might do well to focus on how Jeremiah conveyed God’s instructions to them following the exile. 

Sometimes, life gives us circumstances that are simply beyond our control. It feels as though we can be picked up by the unforeseen health diagnosis, the job termination, or the relational rejection and set down in a foreign territory. We can look around and wonder where we are and how to live there. 

I tell you what. Let’s hear what the scripture says just then in Jeremiah 29. “4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

In other words, God, through the prophet Jeremiah, had some direction for us all. God essentially says in Jeremiah 29, “You aren’t going home. Things are not going to return to the way you knew them and where you knew them anytime soon. So, the healthy stance would be to adapt. Make a new way of life. Stop wallowing in your memories of things that are not going to return.”

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.