Humble House Mother’s Day Retreat 5/8-10/2026. Friday night devotional.
“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” (Jeremiah 29:11). This verse provides the theme for this weekend’s retreat and affirms what you have been learning and experiencing about God during the months since you first came toHumble House. Surely, God has provided well and you all are prospering and have a renewed sense of hope and a vision for the future. I want to put a larger perspective on these words spoken by Jeremiah to God’s people from Jerusalem. A perspective that I hope will enlarge your understanding of its enduring truth.
I want us to think about these words in the context in which they were first spoken. This will give even more power to them. These words were first spoken to the Jewish people who were being taken as exiles into Babylon in Jeremiah’s day. It was not a time of restoration and renewal yet. But God told them his plans would include that. And no matter what circumstances they found themselves in then, and whatever circumstances we find ourselves in today, these words apply to all of us as we walk in faith.
Do you believe God’s Word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to his shell-shocked, confused, and hurting people as they were taken captive? Do you believe that the Hebrews going into Babyloncould have trusted those words? The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem had not even yet occurred and they would spend 70 years in exile, a timeframe that amounts to 3 generations of youth being born there and some older Hebrews, no doubt, dying before they would be released to return home. Was God with them in exile? Did God promise to restore them to Israel in time? Did he give them further instructions on how to thrive there in the enemy’s homeland? Did he instruct them to pray for and serve those where they were forced to live? He did. He asked them to make the most of the temporary circumstances. He asked them and he asks us to make the most of temporary circumstances and stay focused on his presence and his provision for everyone. Some miraculous and wonderful things happened among them while in Babylon, including the example of Daniel’s and his friends’faithfulness to God that impressed the Babylonian kings. Nehemiah, one old enough to remember his home in Jerusalem and longing to return, was placed in a position of service to King Cyrus who ultimately showed Nehemiah favor and made a way for Nehemiah to prepare the way for the people’s return to Jerusalem.The Hebrew people left a legacy in Babylon, even while in exile. It is generally considered probable that the godly wisdom of Daniel, who appears to have remained in Babylon all his life, became part of the foundation for the famous Eastern school of early astronomers, the Magi, the “wise men who came from the East” to find and proclaim the birth of the Messiah! Who but God could have imagined and implemented a plan so huge, covering so many centuries, that would cross cultures and connect nations and lead to readiness for the Messiah already being known and anticipated even in a foreign land whose wise men would come as witnesses to proclaim Jesus Christ’s birth to his own people in Jerusalem and to King Herod himself?
Jesus tells a story of the Good Shepherd who leaves the 99 to seek and save the 1 that has gotten lost. Do you believe the Good Shepherd is doing the right thing to seek the one or would you call it the right thing to stay and oversee the 99 who are safely feeding in the pasture? It depends probably on whether you have empathy for and have seen yourself as the 1 that was lost and needed to be rescued or whether you are indifferent and unaware that any danger outside of the flock exists. In sending his people into exile in Babylon as resident influencers in a foreign pagan nation, was God perhaps planting seeds for the future to draw what Jesus called, “another flock” to himself? Did that influence by God’s people end with the Magi’s journey to Jerusalem and Bethlehem? Did it perhaps emerge again with European Christians who marched to the Middle East in the middle ages? Are the same seeds of that exile still being planted through efforts at peace in the Middle East today? God has a plan….. for each of us and for all of us.
God’s blessings are continually being poured out. Seeds for future harvests are being planted by every generation of believers, even in hard times and difficult trials. We can trust God’s loving kindness, his steadfast faithfulness to his people, and his goodness that desires only and always our best. But God’s chosen people are not his only flock. ALL humanity is created by and belongs to God. All humanity bears God’s image and each is loved by God. But God has chosen to fellowship with those who know, love, and seek to serve him in a relationship of familial adoption and abiding. God leads each of us individually as well as leading his people as a group through seasons of growth, challenge, and celebration. And sometimes he leads us into exile, into wilderness seasons for greater purposes than we can even imagine that will extend far beyond our own lifetimes.
And still, He makes accommodation for all the other people in the world to survive and he continues to reach out to them, asking them also, to trust him, to lean on him. As the Scripture observes, the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. It doesn’t matter whether you see the rain falling as a helpful thing, as a farmer or gardener might, or whether it is an inconvenience, as it might be for a teacher who has arranged a field trip to a forest campground for a class or retreat activity that has to be cancelled because of the rain. Or someone whose home is flooded by rushing swollen rivers from spring rains. All of those people bear his image. All of them will be impacted by rain, sometimes for helpfulness and sometimes for inconvenience, or even disaster. Ultimately, though, God will oversee, balance out, and restore what is destroyed and provide for those who are temporarily inconvenienced or suffering.And we know that, according to God’s Word, in time all people will be led to honor and serve God.
When God says, “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” (Jeremiah 29:11), is he speaking of the only the individual YOU who reads it today in the midst of whatever circumstances you face. Or does it apply equally to the group you, this fellowship of women, to this nation of people, and to all the people of the world? We can trust that God’s selfless agape love for all his creation is available to each of them individually and collectively for all generations forever. Is God at work with a plan that has existed since creation that he will bring to completion that will be good in the long run for everyone.
Can I, at age 72, reflect back on my life and see that even in the midst of my own “exile” times, God was present and guiding me toward hope and a future? I absolutely can. And I can testify to you that he is at work now guiding the circumstances of your lives and the lives of all people toward a hopeful, redemptive future. He is not a God who intends harm. But he is a God of such vast resources and redemptive power that the inconveniences and even the disasters that arise out of natural phenomena or that are imposed on us by the actions of ruthless, selfish, careless, or even evil people will not stand forever. They may last for a season of time, but God is timeless and his will for good, for hope and a future, will outlast any hardship or trial devised by man or that is temporarily allowed by God.
God knows the plans he has. We may not. But we can know God and that he is a good and loving God who desires the best for us in the long run. What God decreed with his voice at creation is what he continues to declare through His Word to each generation. “I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD God, plans to prosper you and not harm you”…. And that is for all eternity.