The Darkest Road Still Leads to Glory
“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, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Jeremiah 29:10-14
“For I know the plans that I have for you , declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve seen it on a bumper sticker, a coffee mug, a journal, or even on the side of a building. Maybe you’ve heard it from a friend in trying times, from a pastor in the pulpit, or from a radio host on a Christian radio station. More than any other verse, Jeremiah 29:11 has captured the hearts of Christians. Along with Philippians 4:13 and John 3:16, it has embedded itself even into the lives of non-Christians. It’s popularity is to be expected. A wonderful and optimistic promise is given with just the right amount of generality about how it will come to pass.
It is a tragedy that in its meteoric rise to fame this verse has been separated from its context. Jeremiah 29 contains one of the very best lessons a person can learn: God’s good plan may take us through darkness on the way to His glory. This chapter is a self-contained letter Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the Israelites who had already been brought to Babylon. This was a people who had experienced the militaristic power and horrific ruthlessness of Babylon at war. This was a people sent into suffering headfirst by their own God. This was a people in darkness wondering if their God was done with them.
Jeremiah’s message was simple. God is not done with His people. The darkness is not a divorce. It is punishment. It is not permanent. God promises that in 70 years, the darkness would be lifted and they would be brought back home. In the early part of the chapter, God tells his exiled people to get comfortable. He tells them to build houses and plant crops. The Jews were not to try and escape the will of God or the punishment of God. But neither should they conclude that God sent them there to be rid of them or to replace them.
The popular understanding of Jeremiah 29:11 is that God will do everything in His power to make you happy, hopeful, and healed. The problem here is not what is said but what is left out. The Israelites were in a great darkness brought about intentionally by God and it is in these dire circumstances that Jeremiah 29:11 becomes such a hope-filled and joyful verse. In 70 years, God would bring them back to Israel. But not only that, they would be taught by this experience to worship Him better and it would be a time of great intimacy between Israel and their God! They would leave Babylon far fuller with the delight of the Lord than when they entered. God knew His plan for them and its end goal!
The problem with leaving the context out of our interpretation should be obvious. God turns into our magic vending machine of small pleasures and low desires. At its best it is lacking but at its worst this interpretation is an empty and unsatisfying promise. The Christian in suffering does not find hope in a God who promises only pleasure! Instead, there is joy in sorrow to find that our present darkness is God’s plan at work to the end of a greater hope, a better joy, a purer delight. God’s good plan may take us through darkness on the way to our glory. Trust in the path of God even in the dark clouds and steep cliffs!
