Bloom Where God Plants You

By the time that Jeremiah lived, our ancestors’ lifespans were “seventy years, or eighty if I have the strength.”  (Psalm 90:10) People in Jeremiah’s time were not living the hundreds of years that the Bible tells us our earlier ancestors lived.  (Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather, is recorded as having lived 969 years; his lifetime occurred before the flood. The Babylonian exile referred to in Jeremiah was almost 2000 years after the flood.)

I struggle to imagine being forced to relocate to a different country out of necessity rather than choice.  All of my life in foreign countries (Bulgaria, United Kingdom) were planned, thought-out choices.  I wasn’t a refugee; I wasn’t being exiled.  My moves to those countries were challenging, but I’d chosen them, so the challenges were surmountable.  I had pre-established support structures and community in place to help me with the transition.  And, I always had a “home” to go back to in the States if I needed it.

So, while I have never been technically in “exile,” as we would commonly recognize the concept, as a Christian, living here in this sinful world is a form of exile. God promises us a perfect, eternal, heavenly world once our earthly life is over, so aren’t we in exile while we’re here on earth with our hope for an eternal future in heaven?

Bloom where God plants you.

God promised that Jerusalem would be restored for the Israelites. And he promised that those exiles’ decedents would get to go back. But with a timeline of 70 years, most, if not all of the people reading Jeremiah’s letter wouldn’t get to see the earthly Jerusalem again.  That must have caused a major paradigm shift for them.

In a similar way, those many people who fled Ukraine in 2022 who are still living all these years later in their countries of exile, have shifted from temporarily sheltering to living and thriving in their new, adopted countries. Many probably have no firm plans to ever return to the Ukraine.  They’ve gotten jobs in their new countries, are renting or buying homes, are marrying, having children, sending their kids to school, growing gardens, living “normal” lives, prospering and thinking about the future in their adopted country, sidelining or abandoning their hopes and dreams from before the war.  They may never go back to live in the Ukraine.  Perhaps they dream that their children or grandchildren might return someday?

The 2004 science fiction disaster film, The Day after Tomorrow, gives some insight into Americans as refugees: tent cities, lines for food, primitive sanitation and utilities — mass migration for any reason is a scary prospect and when you then discover you’ll never see your home again, a person is likely to spend time grieving the loss, and having little motivation to thrive and prosper in the new situation. But God’s command is as clear as his promise.

Bloom where God plants you.

God’s command was clear and specific. Build houses and gardens, seek peace and prosperity for the city where you live (help make it peaceful and prosperous.) Get jobs. Get married.  Have kids.  Don’t just be refugees, be responsible citizens; make the place home.

I can hardly imagine leaving my home country with nothing but the clothes on my back and a little money.  I assume my focus would be firmly on finding my next meal and a safe place to rest; never mind comfort.  But God’s plan for his Israelite exiles was that they would be comfortable; their immediate needs would be met – as He has always promised (“consider the lilies of the field”  Matthew 6:25-34) and they would be able to move on to thinking about homes and gardens and weddings and children and prosperous work.

And some non-biblical writing purporting to be from the time of the Babylonian captivity (the Al-Yahudu tablets) suggest that the exiles did indeed make the best of their new situation. You can read more about these documents here.

If God’s promise of plans for hope and a future are for me, too, all these thousands of years later, then wherever I am, in whatever phase of life and with whatever assets and resources are available to me — His commands to live a full and prosperous life while I’m here also apply.

Bloom where God plants you.

Belonging in an adopted country isn’t easy.  Understanding and assimilating into a different culture, while still working to respect your own cultural identity, takes effort.

Because the natives aren’t always friendly:

“Go back where you came from!”  Those Israelite exiles likely faced racism, just like minorities and immigrants do today.  Afterall, they were only made exiles because they rebelled against the Babylonians.  Despite this, God told them to live like they belonged; to rise above the objections and challenges they faced. 

When I lived in the UK, some disrespectful teenagers told me to go back to America where I came from.  I was on my way to becoming a British citizen; I belonged in the UK as much as I belonged in the US.  Of course, I was a transplant by marriage, more like the biblical Ruth, than I was an exile or refugee, but the challenge of rising above the disrespect – and blooming despite it, was real.

Because making a new life, conceiving new hopes and dreams, takes time and support:

I remember how the Ukrainian refugees were brought into the UK when the war with Russia began back in 2022.  British people opened their homes to the refugees, so they had places to stay until they were able to support themselves.  I wonder, these many years later, how many of those refugees are still being supported by their host families?  The website, Migration Observatory, estimates that almost 200,000 Ukrainians have immigrated to the UK since the war began.  The number of Israelites that were taken into Babylonian captivity was estimated to be 15,000 – 20,000.  Those are all large numbers of people who needed to be housed, clothed, fed, educated and employed – suddenly and unexpectedly.

And while I’ve used Ukrainian refugees as my example since it’s current, I also remember back to the significant influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey back in 2011.  Many of the 3.2 million refugees from that conflict still haven’t been able to return home; many may never go back.  I remember hearing stories about life in the refugee camps:  how people created community and fell into various jobs in the tent cities – finding ways to eventually belong, and “bloom” in their immediate situation.

Many Jews who’d made their lives in Babylon probably didn’t go back to Jerusalem when they were eventually free to do so.

Bloom where God plants you.

It can be a difficult thing to pray for peace.  When a person is frustrated with a government’s policies and procedures, it is very easy to wish for similar difficulties for those who made up the rules and are enforcing them.  It is easy to lose patience if mistakes are made despite all the procedures in place.

For Phil and I, this manifest itself with Phil’s US green card.  After nearly two years of processing, he was finally able to live here as a permanent resident in 2023.  However, in 2026, he discovered that they made a mistake with his name, adding both his first and middle name to the first name field of their systems.  This wasn’t an obvious mistake on the documents he received.  As a result, his credit checks have been failing and he’s been unable to get an interest-bearing bank account here in the States, because the credit agency validation is failing.  Now we hope the green card is fixed and hopefully the process to update his social security account won’t give any problems.  Finding and fixing the problem has not been straightforward and has required Phil to have lots of patience with his adopted country and the people working for it.

Praying for peace is also hard when one hears about corruption within the ranks of government, and when codes and rules that don’t make sense are enforced upon you.  It makes it very difficult to wish for peace upon one’s country.  But, we’re convicted when this happens because God commands us to pray for peace.