Rocky Road Devotions: Trusting the Tracks

Wednesday, February 3, 202 1

Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets, and all the people who had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. This was after King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court officials, the other officials of Judah, and all the craftsmen and artisans had been deported from Jerusalem. He sent the letter with Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah when they went to Babylon as King Zedekiah’s ambassadors to Nebuchadnezzar. This is what Jeremiah’s letter said: This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let your prophets and fortune-tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you. Do not listen to their dreams,because they are telling you lies in my name. I have not sent them,” says the Lord. This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”

One of the more trustworthy aspects of travelling by train is that the tracks always lead to the destination. If you lay down tracks from Charlotte to Memphis the train will always move faithfully between those two cities. One of the more certain terrors of travelling by train is if someone has messed with the tracks.

The people of Jeremiah’s day must have figured someone messed with the tracks. They were God’s favored, the chosen people; now they were defeated captives down in Babylon. Someone had messed with the tracks of God’s promised people.

If you rewind the story a bit you find that it was God’s own people who had messed with the tracks of their journey. They had forgotten who they were, a nation to be held close to God’s heart, obedient, faithful, and different from all others on earth. And so the defeat by Babylonian invaders, the fall of Jerusalem, and being held as slaves in a foreign kingdom was their own doing; talk about a derailed train ride!

Against that backdrop, Jeremiah, God’s prophet, mostly viewed as an enemy because he had warned it was coming, and from a pit that was his jail cell, takes quill in hand and writes to the captives. His message: It’s all good, folks; hold on; this is all part of God’s good plans for you; trust the tracks; keep truckin’.

Good plans, Jeremiah? Son, have you been in the new wine again? We are captives, slaves, and our whole army lies bloodied and decomposing on the battlefield. We lost, and we are doomed…what do you mean, good plans?

Ultimately God was in the process of purifying the thoughts of people who had decided they could lay tracks in any direction they wanted. They’d come unglued in terms of honest lives, cheating one another. They’d left off taking seriously their commission to honor and worship Jehovah God with their lives; instead, they began acting more like their worldly neighbors. They plotted course for proclaiming their own greatness rather than trusting the tracks God had given them. God’s tracks led straight to the Temple and the presence of God; the tracks they were laying down were for the far country.

Defeat at the hands of the Babylonian marauders was not just political, it was theological, a mirror held up for Israel (and the rest of the world) to see how derailed God’s people can get, and the consequences that inevitably follow. This was not only a good plan, it was God’s best plan for purging the kind of thought which imagines the wages of sin can be changed.

Ultimately the good plan of God brought just what Jeremiah wrote, hope, the one innermost emotional soul nutrient which makes human existence possible. Without hope no person (or nation, or species) can continue long. God’s good plan showed Israel their only hope was in the God who had taken them from Egypt’s captivity into the land of promise. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph was still on the throne, and the tracks that led to that throne room hadn’t changed location.

For You Today

We are still amid Covid-19’s pandemic, a captivity of sorts. Asking where it came from might be like Jeremiah’s flock wondering how they could’ve been blind-sided by the Babylonians. The answer is the same – it’s still God’s good plan for us. The antidote is more than vaccines and masks; it’s time to get back to trusting the tracks.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!