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| From Daniel Erlander's Manna and Mercy |
After a year filled with a lot of transitions for my family, it's finally time to put down roots. One year ago, my wife had just begun cancer treatments, and we had just moved across the state to Bay City, Michigan, where I accepted a call as the pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church. My kids were starting at four new schools, and I was just learning my way around. One year later, Laura has finished her cancer treatments, the kids are settling into our community nicely, and yesterday, I signed a stack of paperwork to close on a house here in Bay City. For the first time in 21 years of marriage, we're homeowners. Thanks be to God!
Yet, it must be said, now is a time of turmoil. A new presidential administration has caused a lot of shake-ups around the world. Many federal workers are suddenly without jobs. Even some well-regarded faith-based nonprofits, including Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service), and Lutheran Social Services, are finding their grants suddenly defunded, and their work called into question as "illegal." Many around the world who depended on US funds for food and medicine are going without. We don't yet know the impact new trade policies will have on the price of daily goods for U.S. families. And climate change continues to cause unpredictable weather and the promise of natural disasters to come.
I've been drawn in this time to the middle chapters of the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in times of cataclysmic change in his home country of Judah. The Babylonian army was on the march, ready to capture Jerusalem and deport many of Judah's citizens to a foreign land. The "Exile" was close at hand. Jerusalem was under siege. Jeremiah had been thrown into prison for prophesying an uncomfortable truth to the rulers of Judah: that the nation would indeed be captured and deported to Babylon, and that this was God's will.
Yet with the Babylonians at the very gates, and the world as he knew it coming to an end, Jeremiah was instructed by God to buy a local field from his cousin. He didn't know when, or if, he would ever see this field, but Jeremiah weighed out the silver and bought it anyway, as a sign that "fields shall be bought again in this land of which you are saying, 'it is a desolation...'" (Jeremiah 32:43). Earlier in the book, Jeremiah instructs the people of Judah in exile to "build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce...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 own welfare." (Jeremiah 29:5, 7). It's in the context of exile and an and to Judah's world that we get the well-known "graduation card" verse: "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good and not for harm, to give you a future with hope." (Jeremiah 29:11).
As you read the Bible, you discover a rather strange truth: the world has ended many times. At least from the perspective of God's people, inasmuch as it affects their lives, there are half a dozen major "endings," which cause God's people to feel as though life can't possibly go on, and yet it does. Time after time, it seems like God can'tt possibly be with them in this time of turmoil; this time of exile. And yet God is. Maybe that's precisely why God chose the people of Israel, rather than some vast military empire with only victory and prosperity in their wake: because the world needs to know how to be faithful when your world ends. God's advice almost every time is to go ahead and put down roots. Keep living faithfully. Keep making your community a better place. To use a favorite word of John of Patmos, author of Revelation, "endure."
There are some reading this who may feel just fine about the state of our country and world. Though if they are reading from a perspective of Christian faith, I would hope they would at least be thinking compassionately about their neighbors, for whom this is a very tense time. Still, regardless of whether your moment of exile is now, or some time in the future, God's guidance is the same: go ahead and buy the field. Invest in the future. Become an active part of whatever comes next, for the sake of your neighbors, who will need you, and for the sake of Christ, who comes to you in the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned and the sick. In times of exile, put down roots and stay a while. God will stick with you.
