A Win-Win Proposition

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper                                                 Jeremiah 29:4-7

I always really liked the passage cited above. It was a message sent by the prophet Jeremiah, who was in Jerusalem, to his fellow Israelites who were in exile in Babylon.  They had been carried away from their beloved homeland into exile in Babylon. Think about, from their mindset, being transported from “the holy city” to the center of the pagan world. They were exiled from their homeland into the “profanity” of Babylon. They were depressed, and even hopeless.

Jeremiah gave them a strong message, one of hope and encouragement. He told them to work for the betterment of the hated Babylon. He said that they should settle down, plant gardens, marry off their daughters, and generally make Babylon a place of prosperity and hope. In so doing, they too would prosper.

This was a profound and amazing message to those pious Israelites. They were to mingle with those heathens in Babylon, and actually work to make it a better place! What a shock this must have been for those pious followers of the true God to mingle with and associate with, even work alongside, those worldly heathens!

I believe that message is still applicable today in modern society. No, not a mindset of isolation from a broken world (after all, we are all broken), but an opportunity to display God’s love for his creation right where we are.

I have always felt that the job of the church is to make our community a better place- for everyone. The local church has a unique ability and calling to mobilize the resources in its congregation – both people power and financial power – to make its home community a place of healing and hope. As the community prospers, so does the church. In this way, a possibly skeptical community can see the love of God portrayed right in their own back yard.

We preach the gospel by living it.

Prayer: Lord, help us to become an instrument of your peace and healing, Amen