“Seek the Welfare of the City where I have Sent You”

Former New York Yankees Catcher and Manager, Yogi Berra once quipped, “Wherever you go, there you are.” There is a lot of truth as well as humor in that statement. As human beings we can only physically be in one place at a time. We arrive in those places in many different ways, some out of choice and others through no choice of our own. Regardless of how we arrive: birth, a move by parents, a move for employment, fleeing poverty or danger, moving closer to family or being conquered and transported by an oppressor, as the people of Judah were in 598 B.C. when conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and carried off to Babylon (now Iraq). (See Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7)

Once there, wherever there is, we have a choice to make about how to live. Will we seek to live the abundant life Jesus promises us, or will we complain, withdraw within ourselves and wait until life gets better all on its own, something that rarely happens without action on our part.

Reading the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the “elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile,” it appears that many had chosen to put off living until they returned to Jerusalem, when and if that ever happened. The Lord of Hosts had other plans for them, and speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, proclaimed, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7)

Whatever the circumstances that brought us to this area I believe God has a similar message for us today: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you. . . and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”(Jeremiah 29:7)

We all have gifts and talents which will improve life in our community for many people and for the community as a whole, As St. Paul reminds us, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. Just as the body has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1Corinthians 12:1-13)

“Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works. Amen.”