On the Common 108

Hope in Exile.

Hi everyone,

I’m writing this bit in the middle of our visit from Winter Storm Finn. Our dog Finn is snoring quietly beside me, having gone outside just once today. Dog Finn is under the impression that he melts if water falls from the sky on him. His endurance during these circumstances is most impressive.

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The Part Where There’s an Essay: Hope in Exile

I am the first one to be a cynic. Many of you are right behind me. I know this because I’ve heard you.

I have noticed, even since 2020, my propensity toward cynicism has grown. I am quick to crack a joke, putting up a veneer of humor on top of my heart of skepticism. I am slow to believe the good; I am quick to believe the bad.

As we stare down the corridor of another election year (at this writing we are a week away from the Iowa Caucuses, 2024), I am sobered by my own susceptibility to the news cycle. I’ve largely purged my social media channels; we do not watch cable news, ever; our intake of the news is largely yesterday’s news from a printed newspaper which lands in our driveway each morning.

Yet, the “news” (especially the nonsense title “breaking news” which somehow isn’t most of the time) somehow leaks through, and my heart rate increases. My stress level rises. I am not looking forward to another year of it.

Political news in particular is a tricky kind of news — for a country which is supposed to be governed by an idea, we sure place a lot of emphasis on personalities, don’t we? In a turn of self-fulfilling prophecy, the personalities increasingly put themselves over and above the idea.

A year from now, the personalities will have been chosen, and we will move ahead to the next term. What are we doing until then?

Recently, I was struck by the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah. Here we find one message to exiles: “for I know the plans I have for you…plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (vs 11, CSB) You’ve probably seen this verse inscribed on a graduation souvenir of one kind or another. It is full of optimism for what’s ahead.

However, this verse is seated within a larger passage which might lend confusion as to the future. In this chapter, the Lord God is addressing the exiled leaders and people who had been moved out of Jerusalem and into Babylon. He wants to reassure the exiled people that they have not been scattered to a purposeless future. They are not forgotten, and the Lord wants them to know that. Here’s the first thing he tells them to do in the country where they’re exiled:

“build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. …Multiply there; do not decrease. Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.” (vs 5-7, CSB)

This is said to the people in the heart of an exile which pulled away everything they held dear — in fact, so much that had been promised to them: land, kingdom, a king, an army, borders. They are displaced; there is no established form of worship as they had once understood it; they are bereft at every turn.

Yet God says “pursue the well-being of the city.” Calvin says about this verse that “it was God’s will that they should continue quiet, and not attempt this or that, but carry on the business of life as though they were in their own country.”

He then returns to a reminder that He will eventually bring them back. And that is when we land on the well-known verse 11, “a future and a hope.”

Photo by Luca J on Unsplash

Here’s the part I tend to forget, and maybe you do, too.

The “future and a hope” includes the part about being exiled. It is not in spite of it. There are times of exile and there are times of return, of restoration. And even in the midst of exile, the captives are to settle in and seek the good of the city where they are.

I imagine there must have been some measure of gritty joy in this exercise. Did it come naturally for these people to seek the good of Babylon? I am certain it did not. The temptation to write it all off and wait for death or deliverance must have been powerful.

However, the time spent (seventy years) until the return was good for the city, and it was good for their hearts, as well. As they prayed and went about the business of ordinary living, their hearts were softened, and they were made ready for the return.

This is what God asked them to do. They were to keep living, plant their vineyards, and raise their children.

Crops.

Children.

Marriage.

Home.

These are things of great joy, testifying of abundance and provision, whether they are in Babylon or the New Jerusalem.

We have the resources at our disposal, fellow Christian, to seek the good of our city of exile, as well. To be abundant. To look forward to a hope and a future. To “carry on the business of life” as though we are in our own country.

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For the Anglophiles

Allow me to introduce you to Welsh Tidy Mouse: a mouse who cleans up after a human.

”It is not the first time he has come across an organised rodent.”

I have to say this is my first time.

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Reads & Listens of the Week

I enjoyed this conversation between Russell Moore and David Brooks: How to Know a Person.

I’ve always found the example of Lilias Trotter inspiring, so I enjoyed this review one of her biographies. “This woman saw the world as a place of wonder ruled by the marvelous Creator she ardently loved.”

Daniel Bennett

asks if churchgoing evangelicals are the outlier now. “There is no sign that American politics will become any less polarized and culturally divisive in the years ahead. As political identity solidifies and strengthens its grip on our collective consciousness, religious identity is poised to become more malleable.”

Mindy Belz

“on a year of loss and finding the way.” This is beautiful.

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Our souls do not come from everywhere, but from somewhere…. the method of our salvation was truly local and personal, not cosmic and impersonal. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, 1922