“Misappropriated”

Jeremiah 29: 11: “’For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’” This verse is among the most misused in the Bible. It was written, not to ego-boost some isolated depressed believer, but to challenge a nation of people who were already in exile because of opposing God’s prophets, and who would be there for another seventy years. It was a call to a nation to return to their purpose, and reject the very individualism with which many approach this passage today. Babylon awaits for those who cannot see: with God, it’s not ‘us and them,’ but ‘we.’