October 28, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR 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 on 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.‘“

(Jeremiah 29.11-13)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

We tend to forget that God is waiting also. He has been waiting since before the creation of the world for us to know the best choice for our lives is to choose Him. He knew that it would take some doing on our part to get to the point. He believed that we would even though He knew it would cost Him dearly as well. Waiting is not easy. Waiting can be painful even the near death of us. For many of us, we have to be to that desperate point before we will finally make the right choice. I remember the words of Jesus to Thomas, “You believe because you have seen; blessed are those who have not seen [or will not have seen] and yet they believe.” (John 20.29) There have been and will be people who will just believe in their heart and know in their mind that Jesus is Lord. They will have no crisis conversion, no tragedy revelation or any “I have a transformation story of what was and now is.” For the rest of us, we will take a more difficult path. We will experience hardships, tribulations and trials. We will face those “dark nights of the soul,” as St. John of the Cross called them, and find there is no other way through them except to believe in the sovereign love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Yes, He waits and we wait. He knows the time of such waiting. We only know the waiting even if we knew the time. I believe that is what Jesus was alluding to when He taught that even He did not know the day nor the hour of His return. Only God knew it and He wasn’t telling anything except that it would happen. There is that sense of things in the words given to Jeremiah for the exiles. In them God declares a waiting time of seventy years (not any of the seventy-year time frames of Daniel, thank goodness). Yes, God was waiting seventy years as well. He knew the hardship and challenge of it for the exiles but He also knew the benefit and the outcome.

Why did God choose this course for the exiles? If He choose to wait, He had to know the path He would put them on to discipline their heart, mind and soul back toward God. At least, it would give them the opportunity to repent and turn toward God instead of the foolishness of their own heart. While not everyone would respond to this plan of reclamation, many would. It was not the first time we would hear God’s call and promise of repentance. Solomon spoke of it when dedicating the Temple his father David started and which he completed. In that God said, “If My people who are called by My name will repent, turn away from the evil of this world and believe in Me, then I will hear their prayers (the prayers of dedication and commitment) and answer them, I will heal their land and it will prosper.” (2 Chronicles 7.14) Now something similar was being offered to the Jerusalem exiles. The focus, however, was not the consecration of the Temple but of the nation. The healing was not a reconstruction of the Temple although it would happen, but the reestablishment of the body of believers. They had to become a nation of believers before anything else would happen. They had to remember before they could be restored.

We, as mighty ones of God, are called to wait in remembrance, too. Paul said to the believers in Corinth, “As it was given to me, so now I give it to you; on the night Christ was betrayed He took bread and broke it (a sign of welcomed community and fellowship) . He blessed it and gave it to them saying ‘This is My body given to you. As often as you eat of it REMEMBER ME.’ Following that, He took up the cup and said, ‘I share this cup with you as a sign of a new covenant made in My blood. As often as you drink of this cup, REMEMBER ME. I tell you I will not eat of this bread nor drink of this cup until I do so new with You in the Kingdom yet to come.’ Yes, our time of communion becomes the signs of our commitment to wait upon the Lord. We are called not only to wait patiently for His return to gather the redeemed into the true household of God. We are called to “wait,” serve, Christ in the flesh (the body of believers- that is the Church and all those for whom Christ died that they may be given the opportunity to choose to be a part) and in the spirit (through faithful worship and praise for the blessing of salvation which we have in Jesus’ name.)

Mighty ones of God, God is waiting. The word of Christ’ return has not been given. The promise has. We must steel ourselves against the world and like the Jerusalem exiles, we must build up a strong community of faith which shall be our witness and testimony to the truth of the gospel and its fulfillment in Jesus who is the Christ. How long is our seventy years? Well, much longer than the seventy years for those exiles. History shows us that it was nearly long enough as many of their generations to follow still have not learned from that example. Let us continue to teach them “the way, the truth and the life” which fulfills the gospel call and prepares us for the bridegroom’s return at His Father’s command “the time is now.” Until then we wait patiently and faithfully His will to perform.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.