Eyes Set for Good

This year, something you built may have been taken apart: a job, a plan, or a life you had every reason to expect. The aftermath has been long, and "long" is the word nobody uses when they try to encourage you. They are picturing a short season, while you are living through something that feels as if it will never end.

Jeremiah was shown two baskets of figs set in front of the temple, already sorted. One basket held very good figs, and the other held figs so bad they could not be eaten. The good figs stood for the people already carried away to Babylon. The bad ones stood for the people still living in Jerusalem, in their own houses on their own streets, who looked as if nothing had touched them. That reversal is uncomfortable to read. God says the captives are the ones "whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good." Notice the word "sent." God does not call their uprooting an accident that He is now fixing. He owns it. Then He says, "I will set mine eyes upon them for good," while they are sitting in a country they did not choose. And He promises, "I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up."

There is no timetable in the promise. Nothing here makes the exile any shorter.

There is also a warning in this chapter. The people who looked untouched were the bad basket. Being spared a year like yours does not prove that someone is favoured by God. A person can spend a whole life in his own house on his own street and never once be sent anywhere for his good.

But God promises the good basket more than a trip home. In the next verse He says, "I will give them an heart to know me." That is what He was doing in the far country. If you feel uprooted this year, His eyes are on you for good, and He is planting you somewhere He means you to grow.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 102 is Earthen Vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna