There is a text in Jeremiah 29:1,4-7 that always makes me think. In it the prophet Jeremiah writes a letter to a bunch of people who have been carried off into exile. They are far away from their families. They are feeling disconnected and distraught. They are living among the people who have exiled them. 

I’m sure many of them were struggling with what it meant to live amongst people they didn’t like very much. People who were oppressing them. People who didn’t think like them. 

And the impulse, for some of them, might have been to wall themselves off. Separate. Create their own communities that looked out just for them. 

It would make sense. It would be safer. Just close ourselves off and them get out of here and go back home.

To these people comes Jeremiah’s message and he tells them to settle down. To settle in. To make a life. 

And then he says “Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.” 

Phew. I think a lot of us are feeling like strangers in a strange land these days. Feeling disconnected, scared, oppressed. We want to know who we can trust. We want to keep to ourselves and to the people like us. 

This word comes to us in the midst of that. Promote the welfare of the city where you are. This doesn’t mean you can’t pay attention to your safety and have different circles of trust with the people around you. But it also means you can’t be totally cloistered and only hang out and associate with people who think and believe like you do. Because we need each other to get through this and to build new ways of being that will allow us to move forward. 

Know your neighbors. Build a life. Contribute to the community. Pursue justice where you are. Make things better in your surrounding areas. Because the health of all of us depends on the health of all of us. Our future depends on our community. Always has. So now is the time to invest in the health and welfare of where you are.