While we’re still here

I’ve been thinking a lot of about life and death recently. 

One of the pillars of my church here in Japan, a woman named Kathleen Benton, passed away last week due to cancer. 

She wasn’t a pastor, but she touched many lives and made a difference in every life that she touched.

Maybe some people wouldn’t call her a pillar, but I think she was.

As I look at this passage, it really speaks to me as a person who is still here on earth. 

God was talking to the exiles in Babylon.  They had been taken from their homes and forced to live in a land that was not theirs.  It was a land filled with idolatry and godlessness. 

But God said to them,

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. 

Increase in number there; do not decrease. 

Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.  Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.  (Jeremiah 29:5-7)

It seems to me that God says the same thing to us. 

Like the Jews, we are in a world filled with idolatry and godlessness.  And it would be easy to just say, “I just want to go to heaven already!  I don’t want to deal with this world and its problems.”

But God says, “While you’re here on earth, enjoy the life I’ve given you.  Settle down.  Marry.  Have children.  Be productive.”

More than that, he said, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the place that you’re in.  Pray for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Sometimes Christians just isolate themselves from the world.  They live in fear, making the church their fortress, and just praying that God would keep them safe there. 

But God doesn’t want us to do that.  He tells us to be active in our community.  To make a difference in it.  To be involved politically.  To touch the lives around us.  And most of all to pray for our community and our nation.

And instead of living in fear of the future, he wants us to know that there is a future and a hope for us, even here on earth.  He told the Jews and he tells us today,

For 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. 

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you… (Jeremiah 29:11-14).

So while we’re still here, let us seek the Lord.  Let us pray to him.

Let us not live in fear of the future or of what we see in our community today.  Rather let us go out and enjoy this life he has given us.  Let us be productive, using the gifts he has given us. 

And let us touch the world around us, making a difference in people’s lives.