Week of Praise: Day Three

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

We are all familiar with 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."  (NIV 84)

But what we fail to recognize sometimes is that declaration follows immediately after God says for them to settle down in the foreign land, to accept the exile and dispossession...in short, to accept as God's plan something that seems totally foreign to anything God had ever done for them, even in opposition to what He had promised them.

In that same passage, God names the duration of the dispossession...70 years. Long enough that the older folks who were carried off would die in exile, but a promise that their children would return and rebuild...and He promised to prosper them where they were.

Even in judgement on the nation, those who stayed faithful would be under God's protection.

God is a Covenant-keeper; even when we don't understand and it looks like everything is going wrong and falling apart, He can be absolutely trusted.

Selah.