Exile!

“I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile” (Jer 29:14). After church at Zion Hamburg (SELK) the other day, I chatted with our Ukrainian refugee, Lyubov (see my posts from 30/30/22, 6/21/22, and 8/2/23). She shared that she had recently been back to Ukraine. I asked her how her trip was. Her reply: “It was 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), there was no electricity, and our town was occasionally hit by Russian missiles. But it was wonderful to be home…” Many of us are far, far away from home—either physically, or spiritually, or both. Exiles if you will. Lyubov is an exile. Our Persian church members are exiles. Rev. Dr. Malte Detje (see my post from 4/8/23) attended the same church service. He is a very faithful Lutheran pastor but feels like an exile in his own denomination (the Protestant state church), surrounded as he is by very liberal pastors and Gospel-Reductionism. God allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed as punishment for the Judahites having fallen into idolatry, but by sending them to Babylon He gave them a future. Because after seventy years of exile, He would allow them to return to their vanquished home, where He would restore them through the construction of a new Temple, and ultimately, pave the way for the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ many centuries later—who would be their true Restoration. Have you ever felt like an exile—even in your own land? Then take comfort that we Christians are not of the world but only in the world. Thankfully, to provide us with encouragement and strengthen our faith while we are in exile, our triune God allows us to take refuge in our Lord’s true body and blood. The Sacrament of the Altar is a foretaste of our heavenly home, from which we have been temporarily driven, but where He will one day completely restore us exiles. (Pastor Detje kindly gave me permission to write the above).