Hope and a Future of Formation and Letting Go
We love to quote Jeremiah’s familiar line: “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.” Jeremiah 29:11 People say it’s their favorite verse. We see it on bumper stickers on cars.
But in context, those words were written to exiles, God’s people, carried off to Babylon, grieving the loss of everything they thought they would never lose.
God’s “good plans” included hardship, displacement and living as captives under an oppressive government. And they weren’t changing anytime soon!
What do we do with that?
Just a few lines earlier in the same chapter, God tells His people:
Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens. Marry. Multiply. Seek the welfare of the city where I’ve sent you, for in its welfare you’ll find your own.
It’s a shocking command.
Instead of promising escape, God invites them to root themselves in the very place of their pain. To pray for and bless their captors. To live fully among those they once(and probably still do)called enemies.
It’s as if God is saying:
Let go of your ways.
Let go of your identity.
Embrace others as my children.
You are not defined by the piece of land I gave you. Find your home in me.
The change you seek is not vengeance, it’s transformation.
Wish for your oppressors the same good you wish for yourself. This will transform you
Make this place your home. This will transform you.
Make these people your people. This will transform you.
God was using exile to expose something in them—and in us. The dualistic mindset that divides the world into us and them. The false belief that faithfulness means separation rather than transformation. With God, there is only “Us”, there is no “Them”. Its a hard lesson and it takes hard times to learn it.
Leaning in to Life in Babylon
Exile – an uprooting of everything familiar and safe to us – has a way of unmaking us.
It strips away our identities, our certainties, and everything we thought we could count on.
But maybe that’s exactly what Jesus meant when He said, “Whoever loses their life for My sake will find it.”
The story of exile isn’t just ancient history — it’s an analogy for our own transformation.
It’s what it feels like when God invites us to lose ourselves so that He can give us back something truer.
But here’s where its paradoxical: we can’t make ourselves lose ourselves. The moment we try, we’re already watching ourselves too closely to ever really let go.
So maybe Jesus isn’t asking us to manufacture surrender, maybe He’s preparing us for it.
Maybe He’s telling us that God will use the “exiles” of life: the hardships, the losses, the places where everything familiar comes undone, to do what we would never do on our own.
Jesus perhaps is not so much telling us to make it happen as much as He is saying, “Don’t resist it”.
That’s the message of the exile.
If we are willing to let God strip away all that we cling to, our image of who we are, who we want to be, and who we think we need to be, then He can reshape us into His image.
In Babylon, God was teaching His people what it means to lose themselves and find themselves in Him.
And maybe, in our own way, He’s still doing that with us.
Paul’s Echo: Pray for All
Centuries later, Paul writes from another kind of captivity:
“I urge that prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may live peaceful and quiet lives…” (1 Tim 2:1-4)
Paul’s words echo Jeremiah’s call.
Pray for Babylon. Pray for Rome.
Once again a call to pray for the very systems that make you feel powerless.
Perhaps in the welfare of others, we discover our own.
Prayer has a way of softening what pride hardens.
Jesus’ Fulfillment: Love Your Enemies
And then Jesus brings it home:
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:44-45)
Each step in this story is divine re-education.
God keeps calling humanity to see the other not as enemy but as brother.
To see the exile as punishment is to miss the point completely. It was an opportunity, that none of us would ever give ourselves, to know God as Love and become more like Him in that way. Exiles strip us of all that gets in our way of loving neighbor.
The Hardest Lesson in Love
The Israelites were told to adapt, not to resist.
But we rarely do this well. We stiffen up, convinced we’ve been wronged.
Or we want revenge for those who are making us “suffer”.
We get fixated on things going back to the way they were.
Yet God keeps pushing us forward. He keeps trying to expand our circle.
He calls us to trust that His “plans” are not about comfort but about formation.
That His goodness may come wrapped in unfamiliar places, strange new ways of doing things, and enemies transforming into friends.
That love, real love, always grows in soil we never would have chosen.
Be Perfect, Be Whole
Jesus sermon on the mount was his most famous and scandalous sermon. He moved his hearers from a limited, old way of thinking to an expanded way of understanding God as Love and not as Law. So when he wraps up his new teaching with, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” He isn’t demanding they hold to the law perfectly. He’s describing a life oriented around Love.
The sum of the law is Love. To love is to fulfill the law.
In Love, there is no “us vs them”, “friends and enemies”. There is only “us”.
God is not so much demanding perfection in our performance. Rather He is inviting us to participate in it.
To do that all we need is a willingness to stay open in the very places we’d rather close.
Exile is not punishment. Rather it is a blessing.
A blessing wrapped in letting go of who we are. Letting go of our plans and our future and our hopes. That we may receive His plans, His future, His hopes.
