Building in Babylon

There’s a story in the book of Jeremiah that we talk little about.  Yet, in it you will find one of the most well known verses in the Bible.  

Chapter 29 begins with the prophet writing a letter to the people of Jerusalem who had been captured and taken to Babylon.  I can only imagine what being exiled to a foreign land must feel like.  The changes in culture and language.  The loss of home and family and freedom.  

How scared they must have been.

I wonder at the excitement they must have felt when news of the letters arrival spread throughout their community.  I can actually feel the hope that must have coursed through their veins with the expectation of deliverance that was most certainly spelled out in the pages they now held.

Surely, this captivity was about to end!  Soon they would be set free from this bondage and back to the very thing they longed for… home!  

To life as it was... before.

I can imagine the scenarios that played through their minds as they began to open the letter.  Was there a secret plan in place?  Had Jeremiah come up with a way to help them escape?  Was he even now just outside those city gates preparing to set them free?

And how their hearts must have broken when they saw those first words, “This is what the Lord says.. ‘Build homes, and plan to stay.’”

Plan to stay?

No!! 

Just reading these words thousands of years later brings tears to my eyes.

Build homes? 

Here? 

In Babylon?

The letter goes on to encourage the exiled people to not only build homes but to plant gardens… get married… have children… and then have them marry!  

Wait.. what?

“We’re gonna be here that long?!?”

As Christians today, we focus so often on being set free from bondage.  And, yes, there are many bondages we should seek to be free from.

But we cannot deny that there are situations in our lives that we cannot change.  We cannot avoid. And we cannot escape.

Which begs the questions - what does your Babylon look like?

The death of a dream?  A marriage?  A loved one?

Loss of health? Home? Finances?  

Or can it be summed up by simply saying “COVID-19”?

Babylon is that place we land unwillingly and with no desire to stay.  And to open our minds to the idea of putting down roots and learning to live… no… even thrive in Babylon is offensive to our senses.

I shared this concept with a group of teens recently.  Many of them are living in the Babylon of broken homes.  It is not of their choosing - yet they have no other option.  Their current condition is based on the choices of others.  

And they must reap the consequences.

I challenged them to look even further into Jeremiah 29.  In verse 7, the people are told to “work for the peace and prosperity of Babylon.  Pray for it.  For its welfare will determine your welfare.”

What??

Pray for the peace and prosperity of my Babylon?

No!

I don’t want to live here!  

I. want. to. go. home.

Back to before.

Back to normal.

We can wail and scream and cry.  Search for a means of escape… ignore the obvious… and attack those around us.

But when you’re in Babylon… you’re in Babylon.

At the moment when their hearts couldn’t have sank deeper into their chests, hope appeared on the pages of that letter.

Yes, they were stuck in Babylon.  Yes, they were asked to accept their reality and learn to live with it.  

A hard ask. 

But then the Lord gave those beautiful words we love to claim without acknowledging those earlier sentences… He said, “I know the plans I have for you.  They are plans for good and not for disaster.  Plans to give you a hope and a future.”

He goes on to invite His people to search for Him wholeheartedly with the promise to end their captivity and restore their fortunes - but it wouldn’t happen for seventy years.  

Life had changed.  And it would never look the same for them again.

Sound familiar?

I asked earlier what your Babylon looks like.

How long have you been there?

How hard has it been?

Does the thought of staying offend your senses?

I get it.  I do.

And while your Babylon might look different than mine, I invite you to link arms and join me in praying for the peace and prosperity of our individual Babylons even as we shake the dust off our weary hearts and begin searching for ways to build a life inside our situations.

Take comfort in knowing that God knew where to find the exiled people - after all, the letter reached them even though they were far from home.  He knows where to find you as well.

When we stop searching for a way to escape Babylon, it is then we can pick up a hammer and begin building a new life inside the wrong side of the walls we so despise.

It may not be where you’d choose to be… but if that’s where you are, I hope you will find courage to rise up, build, plant roots and thrive - even in Babylon.

Resurrection Pete

I’ve seen my share of dead people and I'll never forget how as a child, I attended a visitation for gentleman from our church.  He was a withered old man with a long white beard – a skinny Santa Claus if you will.

My family had already huddle-walked our way through the line, shook the hands of the bereaved family and softly uttered our condolences.   In all honesty, I didn’t actually utter anything, but I did my best to look appropriately sad in case anyone was taking note.

My parents continued visiting with family and friends, but soon, I got bored.  (A bored child at a visitation is never a good thing.)

I sat staring over the back of the pews to the open casket at the front of the church… wondering what it was like to be dead.  The old man lay there so still – from where I sat, all I could see was the top of his forehead and a good bit of his nose.   Someone behind me was wiping their red-rimmed eyes while commenting how “pleasant Pete’s face appeared.”

I didn’t remember him looking pleasant.

How does a dead person look pleasant?  It was too much for my six-year-old mind to understand.  No one seemed to be paying attention, so I quietly made my way back up to the casket.  I stood there completely oblivious to anyone else in the room.  And in that moment, it was just me… and old Pete.

I studied his chest - checking for movement.  Nothing.  Pete’s beard didn’t move – nor did his hands.  My eyes travelled up to his lined face and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.  My body became cold and rigid with fear because there before me, Pete had turned his head, opened his eyes… and stared right at me!

My eyes bugged open wide and I turned, tripping in fear as I raced to find my mother.  She was there where I had left her – still talking.  I turned back half-expecting Pete to be sitting up, looking around from the soft, white lining of his coffin – but the ornery old guy had closed his eyes again - looking just dead as ever.

He remained dead the rest of the night and we went on to bury him the following day.

Even then my imagination had a life of its own.  J

Years have gone by, since that memorable visitation, and I have found that, though painful and unwanted, there is a mysterious beauty in death.  While it is the greatest enemy of mankind, it is also the gateway by which we will pass to endless living... no, really living!

God allows us in the simplest ways to experience resurrection each day.

Take a seed, for example.  It is dry, brown, ugly… dead.  Completely lifeless.  Do a time-lapse video of it, and you got nothing.  No change.  No growth.  Just… dead.

But bury it, and a miracle takes place.  From out of the ground comes something completely unlike the seed that still lies beneath the soil!  It is bursting with color, growth, beauty and… life! 

Resurrection!  Life from that which was dead!

If God can bring life from a tiny, dead seed, just imagine what He could do through you.

Oh death, where is thy sting?

Death.  The fearsome enemy of death now no longer has control over you!  The resurrection defeated its unrelenting grip!  Yes, we experience death daily.  We face it still.  But knowing that these moments I’m living today are nothing in comparison to the life I’ll experience one day!

To not acknowledge that Jesus was crucified as a blood sacrifice to cover our sins, that He died, was buried, and resurrected leaves us with nothing.  If He couldn’t rise from the dead… then we have no hope.  But the fact remains, that He did resurrect – and the power that gave Him life is available to you and I as well (let that sink in)!

…if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, He’ll do the same thing in you that He did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself.

When God lives and breathes in you

(and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus),

you are delivered from that dead life.

With his Spirit living in you,

your body will be as alive as Christ’s! 

Romans 8

My challenge in all this is, take the dead areas of your life – your marriage, your finances, your fears, your hopes… bury them in the Word of God and drink in the wisdom and power only He has to offer.

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