Jeremiah 29:10-11 – The Time-Lapse T-Shirt
10 For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:10-11, New King James Version
"Only as we become heavenly can we comprehend heavenly things," reckons Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. "The pure in heart see a pure God. Those who are like Jesus see Him as He is. Because we are so little like Him, the window is but agate," he says referencing the partially opaque windows of Isaiah 54:12. "Because we are somewhat like Him, it is agate."
In such a divided state we encounter Jeremiah 29:10-11. We perceive the word prosper, and we put verse 11 on our T-shirts and our throw pillows. We think we know what prosperity looks like, and so we take the verse as an indication that God's purposes and ours are aligned.
We thus vault over verse 10 to get to verse 11. The notion of seventy years to accomplish His purposes doesn't fit conveniently into a meme, or an ad campaign addressed to those addicted to instant gratification. Where we look for what we want now and even the flimsiest indication we can get God to think what we think and want what we want, He takes the longer view.
He got His children out of Egypt almost instantly, but He took forty years to get Egypt out of them. Seventy years is not a bit too long for Him to uproot our sense of entitlement, for Him to ingrain the Bible's sense of absolute dependence. He knows our agate-obscured view. He knows, as He shows at the end of Jeremiah 29:11, that we often never learn disciplined hope because we are windowshopping for earthly comforts. Even hope must be His gift.
OUR hope is both sticky and transient. It attaches to our notions of what prosperity looks like, feels like, and sounds like. Our hope sours and dissipates quickly when outcomes don't emerge instantly. Social media approval or the direct deposit of resources into our bank account enabling our whims condition us to short-cycle fulfillment. The hope He imparts is different altogether.
Ambrose of Milan, insisting on a disciplined perspective in On Virginity coaches, "Let God alone be sought as the judge of loveliness." Submitted in this way, unnatural as it feels, we begin to sense a more lasting beauty in the Parental perspective God adopts.
In a world where human parents, and bosses, and even spouses experience flagging ardor for us because preliminary results are so far from what they want, God is willing to invest seventy years into an intimate relationship with Him. He even uses these distractible bodies, feeding and caring for them as tangible evidence of His character.
From this vantage point, amid competing hopes and artificially telescoped perspectives, lures John Hauser, "God invites us to eavesdrop on eternity. Our lives," he compares, "only make sense from that vantage point." From higher up, from the rigorous climb which insists on looking at earthly matters with as close to God's perspective as we are allowed, we see what Balaam saw. Invited, compensated to curse the Israelites for fixating on present pleasures, he went higher. He saw the formation in which the Israelites were arrayed. He saw the cross.
So it is with us, beloved. We extract the promises of God we think will bring us the most immediate pleasure, but His purposes are bigger, grander. We are identified with the cross of Christ, first as inheritors of the perfect righteousness there proven with all its eternal rewards, then as followers in Christ's way of discipline. We add nothing to the price He has already paid, yet, finding adherence to Him more treasure than all the rewards of Egypt or Babylon, we learn obedience as Hebrews says He did, through suffering.
"Only as we become heavenly can we comprehend heavenly things," reckons Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. "The pure in heart see a pure God. Those who are like Jesus see Him as He is. Because we are so little like Him, the window is but agate," he says referencing the partially opaque windows of Isaiah 54:12. "Because we are somewhat like Him, it is agate."
In such a divided state we encounter Jeremiah 29:10-11. We perceive the word prosper, and we put verse 11 on our T-shirts and our throw pillows. We think we know what prosperity looks like, and so we take the verse as an indication that God's purposes and ours are aligned.
We thus vault over verse 10 to get to verse 11. The notion of seventy years to accomplish His purposes doesn't fit conveniently into a meme, or an ad campaign addressed to those addicted to instant gratification. Where we look for what we want now and even the flimsiest indication we can get God to think what we think and want what we want, He takes the longer view.
He got His children out of Egypt almost instantly, but He took forty years to get Egypt out of them. Seventy years is not a bit too long for Him to uproot our sense of entitlement, for Him to ingrain the Bible's sense of absolute dependence. He knows our agate-obscured view. He knows, as He shows at the end of Jeremiah 29:11, that we often never learn disciplined hope because we are windowshopping for earthly comforts. Even hope must be His gift.
OUR hope is both sticky and transient. It attaches to our notions of what prosperity looks like, feels like, and sounds like. Our hope sours and dissipates quickly when outcomes don't emerge instantly. Social media approval or the direct deposit of resources into our bank account enabling our whims condition us to short-cycle fulfillment. The hope He imparts is different altogether.
Ambrose of Milan, insisting on a disciplined perspective in On Virginity coaches, "Let God alone be sought as the judge of loveliness." Submitted in this way, unnatural as it feels, we begin to sense a more lasting beauty in the Parental perspective God adopts.
In a world where human parents, and bosses, and even spouses experience flagging ardor for us because preliminary results are so far from what they want, God is willing to invest seventy years into an intimate relationship with Him. He even uses these distractible bodies, feeding and caring for them as tangible evidence of His character.
From this vantage point, amid competing hopes and artificially telescoped perspectives, lures John Hauser, "God invites us to eavesdrop on eternity. Our lives," he compares, "only make sense from that vantage point." From higher up, from the rigorous climb which insists on looking at earthly matters with as close to God's perspective as we are allowed, we see what Balaam saw. Invited, compensated to curse the Israelites for fixating on present pleasures, he went higher. He saw the formation in which the Israelites were arrayed. He saw the cross.
So it is with us, beloved. We extract the promises of God we think will bring us the most immediate pleasure, but His purposes are bigger, grander. We are identified with the cross of Christ, first as inheritors of the perfect righteousness there proven with all its eternal rewards, then as followers in Christ's way of discipline. We add nothing to the price He has already paid, yet, finding adherence to Him more treasure than all the rewards of Egypt or Babylon, we learn obedience as Hebrews says He did, through suffering.
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