Depending on God's Faithfulness

Jeremiah 29:10-14

For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD.

September was filled with birthdays and celebrations and an incredible amount of new shared adventures for our growing family. As the month ended we saw the coming of the end of our honey-moon phase in adjustment for one of our older teens. Having gone this route before this realization could have filled us with incredible fear, instead it has driven us to our knees in dependence on God's faithfulness. I have never been a fan of pretense (whether through good or bad intention) and so I would prefer to get the honey-moon phase out of the way sooner rather than later as we settle into genuine life together. The sooner we can be genuine the sooner we can begin learning to trust and hope together. Sometimes that includes some exile experiences along the way.

This week has held some crushing - but not destroying - events for one of our kiddos and my heart has returned again and again to the passage above. I know that God's plans are for this precious child, for this child's welfare, for a good (and eternal) future and for hope. God is faithful. He has been faithful. He will be faithful again. In the passage above God's promise through Jeremiah was to return and fulfill his promise seventy years in the future. Seventy years would necessarily be longer than some of those exiled people lived, but God's promise and his plans were still good, to give the exiles a future and a hope. His promise was not just to return them to their physical home, but to draw them to relationship with Himself - an eternal hope and home. Something worth waiting on for seventy years, something worth depending on in the midst of exile, something worth clinging to in the middle of teenage crisis.