Gulping down coffee, I sit on the very back row of the sanctuary by a good friend and her husband. I look down at my new wet Carolina blue Hunter rain boots and I shimmy out of my damp jacket after walking through the sideways rain to get in the sanctuary. I glance at the program and see our pastor will be teaching on Jeremiah 29 and I wonder how many sermons or conversations I have had on this passage. Let me just say, I had no idea what was to come, and it was one of those mornings where I felt myself wanting to slide down in my seat so everyone couldn’t see he was talking DIRECTLY to me. It was so clear, and it struck so many chords in my heart.

One of the most profound statements to me actually came at the benediction, when another of our pastors said, “You know when we read Jeremiah 29 we all skip right for the 11th verse and the promises of care and hope for our days. But what we miss is the the call to us first in exile.” Exile means a few things to me - in general it is separation from native land, what I would call home, and that can be by choice or force. And to me it can also mean this separation from the life we had all laid out, like the radical expulsion from our sense of control and governance over all of our days into foreign territory and this would be more like heart territory. I recognize i chose half my exile, but also, there is half i have been thrown into as well.

An angel comes to all those exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon. After being forced into this new place, instead of conjuring up all the ways to return home and spending days on end complaining of all the woes of Babylon, they are instructed to build houses and make themselves at home. They are told to put in gardens and eat the bounty from it. They are extorted to be at home and work for the country’s welfare, pray for the wellbeing of the community. And later in the passage it says as soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up, I’ll show up and take care of you as promised. OH MY GOODNESS.

Here is what translated to my caffeine driven soggy body yesterday morning. If I continue to live with “As soon as….” in my life, i will continue to take myself out of the present and disengage from the life and place I am in. It will always be tempting to disengage because the city will continue to be foreign and let me down. And yet I believe this encourages me to settle in and live wherever I am as if i am not going anywhere. To invest in the very land i sit on, to know and be committed to my neighbors and the businesses and the school that sit on my street because I care for the welfare of my community. I absolutely love the clear imagery of planting a garden and eating from it because we know that doesn’t happen in one season. In fact if we are talking about things like fruit trees it may take many years before we can enjoy any bounty. Yet in all that time the call for me is not just for myself, it is for the whole of where I am living. I am called to serve, not disengage and to seek the welfare of the city and to seek to bless it. What does that look like for me right now?

I am honestly back to yesterday’s thoughts - We are all in this together and it all matters. How we chose to live and settle in for the livelihood of our community matters. And I cannot even grasp that the promise from the angel to the exiles in Babylon was that in 70 years they would have a return and be taken care of.. oh my goodness, I am so impatient. I feel I am carrying on now, but I just wanted to say, the message felt so challenging and yet even hearing the words of really making a home and in some way removing the choice to always flee, sounded so so so comforting and life giving. To know that where I was going to be, even if in exile, I was to dig my feet in and seek to bless the community I am a part of, today. Not as soon as it… quits raining. (ha!) AndI realize my heart actually longs to settle in.

(*for the record, it doesn’t totally answer for me where to settle, but only to live where I am until i get the privilege to buy a home and really dig in… somewhere)