This week we’re reading Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text so hopeful about the future that it is often found on t-shirts and graduation gifts. But while the passage is indeed hopeful—“I know the plans I have for you”—in the context of Jeremiah it is a certain kind of difficult hope: a hope that must first reckon with a tumultuous present reality that will not yield in your generation, or your children’s generation, but only seventy years from now, when Babylon’s time is up. So what then must we do in the meantime, until that hopeful day finally arrives? Build houses, plant gardens, have children. Seek the welfare of the community—the whole community, the Babylonian community—for only when it thrives can you survive until the day God’s promises are finally realized.