Relocation or Exile?

Today in church the pastor preached from Jeremiah 29, the passage where God, through the prophet, told the people of Israel that they should embrace their exile to Babylon and not struggle against it, because the generation that went there would die there.  It would be the next generation (or two) who would return to Jerusalem.  But as for those who were still smarting from the humiliation and disruption, God told them to lean into the pain, to build houses, plant gardens, marry off their children, and settle down.  What's more, they should work for the benefit of their new location, because it would be in their best interests in the long run.  It's not unlike when a parent tells a squirming child who is trying to get out of the car seat or the dentist's chair: "Stop struggling, and sit still!  Read, play a game, watch a video.  You're not getting out, so you might as well make the best of it!"

I couldn't help but reflect on the many, many relocations we have been through since we started out.  Of the 17 moves (most of which were prompted by job changes) we've gone through, I count 10 of them as being "involuntary" or at least undesirable - not things I would have chosen had circumstances not pushed us in that direction.  Many of those experiences of career change and lifestyle disruption seemed like exile at the time.  I kicked against them and didn't want to go, but felt I was "forced" to by circumstances.  At the time, I could not hear the kinds of things that God said to the Israelites in exile - I didn't appreciate what God might have been up to, what plans He had in mind for me (to give me a future and a hope).

As I look back on them all now, it's much more clear that every move, every job change had a purpose - whether discipline, or opportunity, or both.  A difficult circumstance, an isolation, a disruption, led to a period of growth, a new set of friends, an opportunity for another family member, an accomplishment, etc.  Much like with the Israelites in captivity, who used that time to write, collate, and codify the canon of the Old Testament scriptures.  There was no exile God's people faced, nor any that I faced, that was without hope and a future, and none that did not eventually produce a benefit.

Going through those troubling circumstances over and over have given me confidence that there will always be hope and a future, and even an accomplishment, in and beyond any experience of disruption and exile.  

Even in Iowa!  ;)