“You’re an alcoholic. You always will be.” Doctors and therapists said she had fallen too far. The best Sarah could do now was manage just one more day.
Yet when she found herself in a Christian rehabilitation centre, Sarah encountered a starkly different message. Over the entrance, Jeremiah 29:11 proclaimed, “ ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”
Sarah’s anger boiled. What right did these people have to offer hope to those now beyond it?
The first months in rehab were hard. But then Sarah came across the full story: God had given this “hope” to people who also seemed beyond it. The Israelites were exiled by God because of their sin (v. 4) and had lost homeland, identity and security. Hope would take time, yet it did indeed come.
“You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you,” God promised His people. “You will seek me and find me” (vv. 12-13). Their future was hopeful because God was in it.
Sarah realised her situation was similar: God, not her failure, would determine her future. We might not know how things will turn out, but, like Sarah, we can understand that our role is to “seek” the Lord earnestly each day. The rest we can entrust to the God of hope.
By Chris Wale
REFLECT & PRAY
What feels beyond hope in your life right now? How can you keep seeking God, entrusting your situation to His plans?
Dear God, thank You that the hope You offer never disappoints. Help me to entrust my sorrows and trials to You.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Sometimes the prophet Jeremiah is called the “weeping prophet” because of the way he grieved over the people being taken captive by Babylon. In Jeremiah 13:17, we read: “If you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive.” It’s just one expression of the prophet’s many tears shed for his people (see also 9:1, 18; 14:17; 31:16). Lamentations 2:11 also describes Jeremiah’s tears as he observed the fall of Jerusalem.
Bill Crowder
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