On investing where you’re planted

I burst into tears.

‘Settle? Settle?! That’s your word for me for this year? Seriously?’

To put this into context, at the end of each year I intentionally seek God and ask Him for a word for the year ahead. Cue January 2016, and me, alone on my bedroom floor, silently wetting the pages of a yellowing dictionary.

2016 - the year of settling. It didn’t exactly have a ring to it.

I secretly hoped it was the wrong word, but the sinking feeling in my gut told me otherwise. I knew God hadn’t made a mistake but I needed to better understand what He was trying to say to me through it and so, in hope of further revelation, I began frantically searching the Bible for any reference to the word ‘settle’.

My digging led me to the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 29 and my spirits lifted as my eyes landed on the beloved fridge-magnet verse Jeremiah 29:11.

‘For I know the plans I have for you’, says the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’

Prospering. Hope. A future. That was more like it! But where on earth did it talk about settling? I didn’t remember that…

After turning back the page and reading from the top, I found it jumping out at me in verse 3

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.”

How strange! I’d never really looked at the context of this chapter before and what I discovered completely took me aback.

Chapter 29 is a letter written by the prophet Jeremiah to a bunch of Jewish exiles who have been uprooted from their hometown of Jerusalem, taken captive by the powerful King Nebuchadnezzar and transported all the way to the distant land of Babylon.

These people are without homes, separated from family members and loved ones and have now found themselves in a country where they don’t even speak the language. They’re homesick to say the least and do you know what God says to them through our friend Jez?

‘Settle Down.’

Settle Down. Take up residence. Make this place home.

‘But Lord’ I queried, ‘They’ve just been through a crazy, traumatic life event which means they’re now categorically somewhere they don’t want to be and you expect them to just…hunker down and embrace it?’

I read the passage again a few times over to confirm that I had understood it correctly. But the more I read, the clearer it became:

· Build homes (only worth doing if you’re going to be somewhere a while.)

· Plant a garden and eat the produce (sowing and reaping a crop is definitely more than a year’s work.)

· Get married and have children and then watch your children get married (Wait, this is decades worth of life we’re talking about here!)

The instruction is clear, the exiles were to live life in Babylon as if they were going to be there for the long haul.

I squirmed inwardly at the thought.

Sure, I was ‘in’ Nottingham physically, but the truth was that my head and my heart were elsewhere and the thought of living life in this small city as if I’d be here for the long haul made me feel a little sick; student life here had been great but I’d never intended to stay.

In fact, most days my thoughts were turned to the future wondering about a life elsewhere. I refused to make plans beyond my September deadline and would either pointedly refer to the likelihood of my not being around or would tactfully avoid the subject if others brought it up. I thought often of France and asked God when He’d open the door for me to go back. I was half-hearted in some of my efforts and distant in some of my relationships because really, what was the point in getting to know people if I just had to say goodbye to them a year later?

On reflection, I hadn’t really settled at all, but God was about to change that.

Over the course of the next few months, as I asked for His help, He grew in me a new resolve to be present where I was. In truth, my external circumstances didn’t change that much at all, but in choosing to fully embrace where God had planted me, my heart changed instead.

I stopped viewing everything through the lens of ‘temporary’ and poured more effort into work, projects and relationships. I took seriously the charge of verse 7 to ‘seek the peace and prosperity of the city’ in which I was in, to pray for it, to speak well of it, to actively notice the good things about it.

“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

I signed a housing contract without money or the prospect of a job but nearly four years later, four years longer than I ever expected to be in this place, I can testify to the way God has blessed me: in friendships, opportunities and career, in ways I could not have foreseen.

In all honesty, my life does look different to how I thought it would so many years ago and it’s not to say that I never experience fleeting moments of wondering if the grass is greener elsewhere, but life really is richer than I could have imagined. I know that promised fruit of peace and prosperity.

Friend let me tell you, there is good for YOU in YOUR place of exile too.

I’m talking about that city or country you don’t want to be in, that housing situation that isn’t ideal. Your place might not be a physical one, it could be a season instead: you’re single whilst all your friends are paired up and that wasn’t how you thought it would be. Perhaps you’re in a job or a role that is so far from all you dreamed of, or maybe life overall just doesn’t look the way you thought it would at your particular age and life stage.

If that’s the case, it’s ok, it is what it is. But my honest advice to you? Embrace it anway. Invest where you’re planted and put down roots.

Whilst we can fear that getting our heads down condemns us to a life of misery and missed opportunity, the reality is, that like any plant that doesn’t put down roots, we’re at risk of withering by depriving ourselves of the very soil-goodness that is ours to find in this season.

Imagine if the exiles in Babylon had just sat around for 70 years and waited for God to deliver them? At the appointed time, He still would have, but think about how much life they would have missed out on in the meantime; building homes together, getting married, seeing their grandkids grow up.

In a similar vein, wouldn’t it be the saddest thing for you to look back to this period of your life and realise that it could have been so much richer if you’d embraced it more?

The truth is you can settle where you are in this season without fearing you’ll be here forever, because investing as if you’re going to be some place for the long haul doesn’t actually mean you’ll be there for the long haul. It’s an intentional, counterintuitive choice that positions you to receive the blessings even when your circumstances are less than ideal.

What’s more, He’s a promise keeper by nature and so you can trust that yes, He has a hope and a future for you but He also has a present and it’s just as good. Don’t miss out because you chose not to invest! Where are your places of exile? What would it look like for you to embrace the place that you’re in?

Grateful for you and always rooting for you (pun intended)

Al,