Hard Blessings

 January 17, 2022

A favorite text for high school baccalaureate services comes from Jeremiah 29:11-13

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

I’ve preached from this text myself, but I fear we too often misread it by taking it out of context. Back in my college days, professor Warren Woolsey used to say, “A text without a context is a pretext.” This particular text is used to assure impressionable people that “God’s got this,” that he is going to arrange life so as to prosper them and smooth the path before them. 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a future filled with hope and peace, but two conditions are given for this blessing to become a reality, one in these verses quoted above, and one in the surrounding text.

The first condition is our seeking God with our whole heart. God doesn’t promise to bless any old dream we may have. Too often, we want the things God can do for us, but care nothing about God himself. God says we must seek him, not his blessings, but God himself. When things don’t turn out as we had hoped, and the blessing we wanted doesn’t materialize, we quit the whole enterprise. We weren’t interested in God, but in ourselves. Will I seek God even when he refuses the blessing I longed for? Am I willing to be like Job, who lost his wealth, his family, and his health, only to say, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21)?

The second condition to the blessing offered here is patience. The first wave of exiles had been removed from Judah, and the people were hoping for a speedy return. False prophets were claiming that God promised deliverance within two years. Jeremiah told the people to prepare for a long wait, to settle down in Babylon. God’s deliverance wouldn’t come for seventy years. In addition, they were to bless the very people who took them captive: “Seek the peace of the city where I have cause you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace” (29:7). 

It’s one thing to seek God; it’s quite another to seek peace for people who have interrupted and even ruined your life, but that’s one of the conditions for the future with hope God promises. In spite of disappointment, in spite of opposition, in spite of dreams that have been dashed and plans ruined, will I seek God with my whole heart, and seek peace for the very people who have made life difficult? And am I willing to live this way for a lifetime, without seeing the hopeful future realized? It’s a tall order, but it’s the rest of the story behind this text we love to misquote so much—a hard and difficult blessing, indeed!