Now that is reassuring, isn’t it? To know that our God is planning good things for us, mapping out lives full of hope! If we just didn’t have to look back to verse 10, we could rest in the joy! But when we do back up, we see that God certainly does have good plans for Judah’s future, but that good future comes 70 years down the longer, drier road of captivity. Does that caveat erase the fact that God is still planning good for them? Or does it mean that God is abandoning them for these coming 70 years? Does it mean that no good can come out of these 70 years? When God‘s good "big" plans for us are delayed, do we grow discouraged and weary and doubtful that He ever had good plans for us in the first place? Do we feel like all good things have been put on hold?
The good plans that God has envisioned for his people, His very good plans, will certainly come about. They will need to be patient and they will need to be confident of his faithfulness to His promise. As do we. We have a God who is working for us, all the time. In John 5:17 Jesus tells us, "My Father is always at work..." Even when we are in the period of waiting for His ultimate good plan, He continues to have good plans for each segment of our lives. In fact, Paul writes in Romans 8:28, "And we know [with great confidence] that God [who is deeply concerned about us] causes all things to work together [as a plan] for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose." Amplified Bible. While the people of Judah lived in captivity in Babylon, God did not leave them and His plans were still ongoing. His plans included a Jewish boy taken captive named Daniel, a servant to the King of Persia named Nehemiah, and an exiled priest named Ezekiel. In the time of waiting, His plans highlighted a heroic Queen named Esther, and a Jewish King named Zerubbabel. Was God far away, had he quit making plans for his people? The stories of these Old Testament lives show how untrue that assumption is. For all the other unnamed people of Judah living in exile, God had given them instructions of how to live in the time of waiting, Jeremiah 29:5 says, "This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper.” While we wait for God's promise, He continues His plans for good. We don't wait in misery, we wait knowing we have a good, good Father who is always at work on our behalf.
Just as in Judah’s time of waiting, as we wait we, too, need to be reminded that God has never left us and that He is always at work. Just as we now can see all the other things going on in those 70 long years of captivity, we can be assured that God is working out what we often think are the subplots of our bigger story; and then sometimes those seemingly lesser storylines, surprisingly (only to us, never to God) become our life’s big story. The one that we thought would never happen! All of a sudden we say, "Wow, God did that in a way I never saw coming!"
Sadly, for many of us as we grow older, it seems that life no longer holds a great future or the light of hope. We’ve passed the ages of setting goals, starting families, and nothing seems to get us as thrilled with life as we once were. I’m sure for the older Jews who were in exile and knew they probably would never see their home country again, they, too, had their hope diminished.
I have come to think that God purposefully uses our diminished excitement with earthly plans to further ignite in us a greater anticipation about His heavenly plan…after all, it is His big, forever plan of good for us! It is the plan that God had from the beginning of time, His plan of salvation for us, to reconcile us unto Himself and to live with Him for eternity.
So, YES, this is a message of good, good plans ahead...plans for a forever future and a glorious hope!
Revelation 21:1-7 - "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.” And He told me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life. The one who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be My son."
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