Daily Devotion

Ansgar, Bishop of Hamburg, missionary to Denmark and Sweden, died 865

Jeremiah 29:1-14

Our reading today contains the Hebrew Bible reading Anna and I choose for our wedding. It spoke to us and our life together in Chicago. Our first home was in the Little Village neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. It was near the high school where Anna worked with an organization providing academic and personal development to students facing a lack of resources, poverty, and systemic racism. (Fun fact: she started working there as a member of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps.) 

I was working as an editor of culinary textbooks, but I would soon move into positions working as a chef instructor for an after-school program and then as a sous-chef of a social enterprise restaurant that provided job training for those with barriers to employment. We got our first flock of chickens, which is not quite the same as the gardens mentioned in Jeremiah, and felt that we were seeking the welfare of the city. 

This passage gave a sense of purpose to to our marriage and our time in the city, though we both feel most at home in the country or the woods. Certainly not an exile like what Jeremiah and others were to experience, but we did share the share the feeling of needing to put roots down where we felt called to serve.

Have you ever felt exiled to a place and needed a reminder of why you were there or what your purpose was? 

Perhaps you feel like you are in exile now due to the isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Or you are new to the Cincinnati area and are feeling distant from family and friends in other places. 

God is with us in these seasons and places. As the prophet writes, “When you search for me, you will find me says the LORD…I will let you find me.”