“Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.” (v. 7)

You know it. You feel it.

You and I are not home yet.

We are sojourners, living these precious days in a place that pales when compared to home.

So…what will you make of this life—of these days—as we await the place we long to be?

Will you retreat? Will you stock up and lock up and ride this thing out? Will you join the contrary chorus of those who merely criticize? Will you despise this life and these days, in the name of the hope that lay ahead?

Or will you steward it all for good?

God’s word for the exile isn’t, Retreat! Complain! Throw religious rocks from your sacred fortresses! His instructions have never centered on sitting back and watching for the judgment we know will come.

Instead, we live and we work and we love for the good of—we pray, and we pour ourselves into—the wellbeing of our not-home-yet neighborhood. We steward our citizenship. We invest for a Kingdom downline. We show light and hope to those who are here with us, and we do it with a prayer that they might be called home with us, when the day arrives.

To you who are not home yet, pursue good here, for the sake of the Gospel.

— Tyler