“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 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. 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.” (NIV)

I'm not sure I've ever felt more out of place than when, a number of years ago now, I moved from Alaska to Georgia. I remember walking into a restaurant one day in my Xtratuffs and an AlaskaChicks hoodie and suddenly realizing quite pointedly that I no longer blended in with the crowds around me as I had up north. Maybe you can recall such a feeling from some point in your life, as well. In fact, the apostle Peter says that, as believers living in the world, we may always experience this feeling to an extent.  

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In 1 Peter, he addresses his audience as "exiles," or those living as foreigners or strangers in a land that is not their home (1 Pet. 1:1). Although, for followers of Jesus, this language is mostly a symbolic way to understand the tensions we feel as we seek to be in the world, but not of it (John 17:14-16), for Jeremiah and his Israelite compatriots in today's key passage, this was a grim reality.  

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As the first exiles were carried off from their homeland to Babylon, the Lord told Jeremiah to write to them, instructing and encouraging them with a message of direction, rebuke, and hope. To the Israelites, whom God had always called to be a set-apart people so that their lifestyle of holiness might be a witness in contrast to the neighboring nations, his instructions must have seemed quite strange...

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"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 'Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 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. 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'" (Jer. 29:4-7).  

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Interestingly, God does not call his people in this season to remain detached, mobile and ready. He does not tell them to keep to themselves. He does not tell them to live scared. He tells them to settle in and make this place home, even as they know quite well that it is not...not really.  

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Why would God do that? Surely, he didn't want his people to assimilate into the Babylonian culture. Rather, we see our big God using the discipline he was applying to his children to simultaneously bless and bring light to a part of his world that desperately needed him too: Babylon, the center and crown of the pagan world at the time. Our God certainly doesn't waste a thing, does he?  

Perhaps you're beginning to see some parallels in this picture to our own situation today. Peter called first-century believers to think of themselves as exiles in the Roman-dominated and Greek-thinking world they lived in, echoing these instructions that God had given to their Israelite ancestors living in exile, too. And we today can choose to receive the same call.  

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As we enter the depths of a political season, we as a church don't want to live detached from the world God has placed us in. As exiles in this world, we don't believe we're called to keep to ourselves or live scared. Rather, we take the words of the Lord to heart: Settle down. Plant gardens. Grow. Multiply. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

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How are these words landing on your heart today for your life, situation, passions, and gifts specifically? Spend a few moments in prayer today, asking God to reveal how you can, over the next four weeks in particular, pray for and seek the peace and prosperity of this city in which God has placed you.  

Almighty God, we trust you with where you have positioned us! We want to live faithfully in this land, so will you show us how you want to bless it through us? Give us your discernment, love, and compassion for our city and our nation. Even though we know it is not really our home, we know that you love the people in it, and so we want to be your hands and feet in this place. Guide us, Lord. Amen!