By Jeremiah, Eugene And Me.

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the LORD. This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”                               29.4-14

Eugene Peterson says ‘Exile is traumatic. Our sense of  who we are is very much determined by the place we are in and the people we are with. When that changes abruptly the accustomed ways we have of finding and sensing our significance vanish.’310

‘The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don’t want to be. We are not at home. We are forced to be where (we don’t fit, where) nothing fits together’ 311

False prophets exploit our nostalgia by promising us that ‘we will be going home.’ Even if it is an illusion, it’s the message we want to believe. But it undermines our capacity to ‘be here now’, to ‘be present to the moment’,      to make the most of our opportunities in the circumstances’. 313

Jeremiah says you should “Build houses and settle down;’ Make this place your home. ‘Plant gardens and eat what they produce’. Plan long-term. Plant in the expectation you will reap what you sow. Participate in the local economy.‘ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters’. Make the people in their society your family. Not only relate to them, but include them as your own.

‘And, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper’“. If you want to live your life to the full, start where you are and work with what you have. Just make sure you are working for the welfare of everybody in the city. 315-6

In my life I have been forced to leave three or four countries against my wishes.

One time I was arrested in Yugoslavia for distributing ‘illegal’ literature and asked to leave the country immediately. But it didn’t have much impact on me, as I was only passing through. Another time, when civil war broke out in Afghanistan, I was forced to flee from Kabul, through the Khyber Pass, to Peshawar in Pakistan. That impacted on me a lot more, as I had been living in Afghanistan at the time, and I was forced to leave my home abruptly; and I was worried about those left behind.

However the times that have had the greatest impact on me were when, as an eight-year-old, my family migrated from England to Australia and when, after living in Delhi for twelve years, we were ordered to leave India and return to Australia. Neither of these decisions were my own. They were made for me by others. In first case, by my parents; in the second case by the government. Both these decisions involved my being forced – earlier as a child, later as an adult – to leave the home I loved and go into exile. And on both occasions my place of exile was Australia.

As a child I hated being in Australia. My exile in Australia morphed me from ‘nice little English kid’ into a ‘little pommie bastard’; from a ‘boy’ who played ‘football’ into ‘a girl’ who played ‘wogball’; from an ‘A grade student’ into a ‘fool’ who felt so ‘degraded by my classmates’ I wet my bed when I had nightmares about school.

As an adult I hated having to come back to Australia. Not only because of the memories that I had of coming to the country as a child, but also because of the memories of my life in India as an adult that I had been forced to leave behind. My exile in Australia represented the loss of my life in India. I grieved the loss of the life that I had there with my friends – and the loss of who I was there with them. In Australia I felt totally lost. In India I had felt that I was ‘somebody’ who was doing ‘something really worthwhile’ with my life. In Australia I felt I was a ‘nobody’ – and there was ‘nothing I could do here that was of the same value of what I did there’.

The challenge for me living in exile in Australia has been Jeremiah’s call.

‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Don’t waste your time wishing you were somewhere else. Be here now. Be present to the moment with the people in this place. Don’t be crippled by self-pity. It doesn’t matter whether you are happy or not. Just get on with the task in hand: “seek the peace and prosperity of the city in which you live”.

A lot of the people in the city we have helped ‘seek peace and prosperity’ are other groups living in exile in Australia – refugees from Latin America, Central Asia, Indo China and the Horn of Africa. Over last twenty years we’ve helped hundreds of exiles in our city get housing, settle their families, learn the language, adjust to the culture, create work cooperatives and develop their own community organisations.  And as we have done so I have found myself feeling more and more at home here

(Not that I have become assimilated. We should become acculturated – but never assimilated. I support the Brisbane Broncos, but I don’t support the Aussie cricket team’s win-at-all-cost attitude that was displayed in the Sydney test against India a year or so ago!)

Dave Andrews

Numbers refer to pages in The Quest by Eugene Peterson Zondervan Grand Rapids 2000