Bloom Where You Are Planted

Wow.

I had no idea how literally I, myself, would take my last post.

Silence has done me some kind of good.

I walked in the door of La Petite Maison Blanche tonight and, after a long rant about the two wasps who sabotaged my nap and all but ruined my life this afternoon, had a cookie shoved in my face by the amazing Deirdre.

So as you can imagine, I'm a happy camper.

Now I'm sitting down and wondering how in the world I'm going to actually recap the last month. So much has happened in my heart that really may or may not be articulatalable. (definitely not a word, but hey it's been a while and homegirl is fresh off of exams)

There are simply too many songs and books and moments and laughs and tears. What is more, though God uses these things in my life to reveal a bit about himself and the world I live in, there is a God who exists outside of these things. Who says in the absence of these things--outside of my ability to buy this and that, outside of temporary happiness or chest-tightening sobs-- He is still enough. So I am so thankful for a job that uses church money to equip me with tools and venues to show care for seven individuals looking for a purpose in life.

BUT. I am more thankful for the attributes that these books and songs and moments reveal about God. And without each of them, I am confident that those attributes would still exist. Maybe that doesn't make much sense. But it does in my head.

Like I said. Unarticulatable.

That confidence means the world to this heart that has been in sore want for some courage. Like many times this semester, it just doesn't seem right or fair to begin throwing up pictures of how beautiful and fun my life is (and it is that from time to time a lot) without somehow capturing here the heart that it is coming from. The silence has done so much to address that heart, with its hits and misses, and I am content to know that my lack of creative writing here, for once, does not reflect a lack of time mulling over the Word of God, desperate for his direction.

It is also nice to sit and not be spouting stuff out off the top of my head. Much of this has been marinating in my pocket for a good while and is by no means just a cutesy blog topic. My dilemma, actually, is not knowing what topic to go with. How to categorize and make organized thoughts out of a daily, if jumbled, attempt to know the Holy Spirit in a way that would bring me out of my cage and into a life of risk for a God who demands no less? How to go about a summer filled with ordinary when I have an extraordinary God? Is it that the two cannot jive? I think it's that I have to start there. In the ordinary, if God is going to trust me with extraordinary. And He'll let me know when that will be.

It will not work the other way around, Sadie.

So I'll be the most faithful I know how to be with my every day, trusting God to make it eventuate in a life change. Not just for my sake, but for His. For His church's sake. For His people's sake. For the sake of their peace and prosperity even as I wait in this exile of a life that so often feels far from God. I've always known the verse Jeremiah 29:11. "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 a hope and a future." I guess over time the words become mundane and bumper-stickery. But as I prepared my sermonette for our high schoolers on Sunday, I saw them in an entirely new light.

Because God didn't promise that to people looking towards their own plan. It wasn't a confidence boost for seniors looking to make it big in the world, originally. It wasn't about encouraging people along in their hopes and dreams. It was God promising his exiles in Babylon, after their plans for crossing in Jerusalem continued to fail, that he had a plan B. And it was not going to be easy. It was not about making it big or having revenge or taking courage to do their own thing.

It was about having confidence to do God's thing. And this is what Jeremiah said:

⁴ This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. ⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." ⁸ Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: "Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. ⁹ They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them," declares the LORD.

¹⁰ This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.

A "bloom where you are planted" sort of message for the exiles. Most of whom were elders, priests, and prophets who wanted nothing more than to glorify God in the place they had always planned for. All of whom were getting told to wait their turn.

All of whom were commanded in the meantime to make their place of bondage home. Told by God to seek peace and prosperity not for themselves, but for their captors and the foreigners. To be faithful where they were not because it was their plan but because God had a far better way. Just another 70 years, what's the big deal, folks?

I think the point of Jeremiah 29:11 is that is was a big thing to ask of these exiles, who were already yearning for home and are here told that it would for sure be at least another 70 years before they'd step foot in Jerusalem.

The verse isn't for those looking to make it big off of their own plans, however Godly and good they might have been. It's reassurance to a people whose plan had just been for sure crushed. A message that not only would they make it in the meantime, before Plan B was revealed, but that they would prosper. Because God said so.

I am waiting for God to fulfill his "glorious promise" of eternity in a place where nothing can be done but to glorify Him. But I dare not wish away this exile, for it is where His promise is sweetest and most needed. I want Plan B. I want the hope, I want the future. But it means that Plan A goes out the window. This idea that I know on my own where to go and that it'll just all work out goes to the curb.

This will be home because God said there is a purpose in my being here. And if the city prospers, I prosper. So I'll seek some peace and prosperity for other people, and put my hope in the promise of the God of Plan B's.