October 12, 2025 Reflection

Let us pray.

Loving God, we give you thanks for this day – for the turning of the season, for harvest, for tables filled with both food and friendship.

As we open your word, open our hearts too – to gratitude, to purpose, and to the quiet joy of belonging wherever we are planted. Amen.

The words we just heard from Jeremiah are part of a letter – not a warm Hallmark card, but a tough-love letter to a people far from home.

The Israelites had been taken from Jerusalem to Babylon – a strange land with different gods, different customs, different food (and likely very different weather!).

They were disoriented, discouraged, and dreaming of escape.

If Jeremiah had been one of us, they might have asked him:
“Are we there yet?”

And Jeremiah, bless him, would have said: “Nope. And don’t pack your bags. Unpack them.”

Instead of offering comfort that their time in Babylon would be short, Jeremiah says:

Build houses and live in them.

Plant gardens and eat what they produce.

Marry, have families, raise children.

Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you.

Pray for it – because in its welfare you will find your own.

That was not what they wanted to hear.

They wanted to go home.

But Jeremiah says, “Be at home where you are.”

Now, most of us are not living in literal exile. But many of us know what it feels like to be somewhere we didn’t plan to be – in a stage of life we didn’t expect, with a diagnosis we would not wish on our worst enemy, in a world that feels unfamiliar or in a church going through a lot of changes.

Many of us look around and say, “The world has changed so much – I hardly recognize it!”

And then we check the price of groceries and say, “Yup – definitely Babylon.”
Jeremiah’s message speaks right into that experience.

He says: Don’t wait for life to get easier before you start living with gratitude and purpose.

Don’t hold your breath until everything feels right again. Right here, right now – seek the welfare of the place where you are.

In the last year or two I read a book called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, which sounds like a cheerful title until you realize that 4,000 weeks is roughly how long the average person lives. That’s it. About 4,000 trips to the grocery store, 4,000 Mondays, 4,000 chances to forget what you walked into the room for. Now, he’s not trying to depress us, he’s trying to liberate us. Instead of waiting until life is perfectly organized, or until our Fitbit approves of our health level, or until the world finally calms down… he encourages us to stop delaying joy and purpose for “someday” and instead embrace the time and place we’re in right now. If we want to learn a new skill or try a new hobby or call a friend – prioritize time for it now. As we all know, tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us.

The ideas in Burkeman’s book is really just another way of saying what Jeremiah was saying centuries earlier: Stop grumbling about where you wish you were – plant something, bake something, love somebody, and get on with living. Holiness doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It happens right in the middle of ordinary, imperfect life… maybe even on week 2,183 out of 4,000.

Even in Babylon, even in a time of change, even in uncertainty – God is still present, still planting seeds of goodness, still calling us to bless the place where we stand.
The verse “seek the welfare of the city” is one of the most radical things in scripture. It’s not just about being nice to your neighbours. It’s about realizing that our wellbeing is intertwined with the wellbeing of others.

This runs counter to much of what we hear in the world today.
In so many places, the attitude is: “As long as I’m okay, that’s all that matters.”
But Jeremiah says the opposite: You’ll only be okay if your neighbours are too.
We can see this everywhere if we pay attention.

When the cost of housing in Vancouver climbs higher than the mountains around it, families get pushed out – and soon we all feel the strain: longer commutes, fewer workers, more loneliness.

When health care is stretched thin and people wait months to see a doctor, the whole community feels that anxiety and weariness.

When climate change brings smoke all summer long, from wildfires across the province – or across the country – we’re reminded that the air we breathe is shared by everyone.
And when political noise grows louder – especially from down south, where a certain president won’t leave our newsfeeds and won’t stop talking about Canada becoming the 51st state, we can feel the tension rising in our own living rooms.

We don’t live in isolation; we share the same air, the same grocery aisles, and the same hopes for our children and grandchildren.

And Jeremiah’s call to “seek the welfare of the city” reminds us that we can’t thrive while ignoring the pain or the promise around us. Our gratitude must ripple outward – from our own hearts to the neighbourhood, to the nation, and to the world God so loves.

So maybe that’s part of what Thanksgiving is really about – noticing the ways our lives are woven together, and giving thanks not just for what we have, but for who we share it with. Gratitude grows deeper when we realize we belong to one another. When we give thanks for the harvest, we’re also giving thanks for the people who picked the apples (or the tomatoes – thank you Stan!), drove the trucks, stocked the shelves, and cooked the meal. Gratitude becomes more than a warm feeling; it becomes a way of seeing the world – a way of living that seeks the welfare of others, knowing that in their thriving, we find our own.

Thanksgiving is not just about saying thank you; it’s about living thank you. Jeremiah invites the exiles – and us – to root our gratitude in action.

And we don’t have to look far to see what that kind of gratitude-in-action looks like. When I hear Jeremiah telling the people to “build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the place where you are,” I can’t help but think about our own Sacred Garden here at the church. That space didn’t appear overnight. It was dreamed about, planned, funded, dug, weeded, planted, prayed over – by people who believed that God could do something holy right here in this very place. Instead of wishing for different circumstances or waiting for a “better time,” they put their hands in the soil and said,

“Let’s make beauty here. Let’s create peace here. Let’s welcome others here.”
That garden is more than landscaping, it is creating community… it’s a living testimony to the fact that when we plant hope where we are, God makes it grow. And every time someone sits on a bench, walks a path, or takes a deep breath under those trees, they receive the blessing of someone else’s faithfulness.

So as we give thanks for that sacred space and for the hands that brought it to life, maybe we can each ask ourselves today: What am I planting right now? Not just in the ground, but in my relationships, in my habits, in my prayers. What seeds of kindness, healing, or hope am I tucking into the soil of ordinary days, trusting that God can make more of them than I can see?

So how might we, especially those of us who are living with limitations, seek the welfare of the place where we are?

Here are a few ideas:

Pray for your community… Not just the people you like, but for your city, your neighbourhood, your leaders, the grocery clerks, the bus drivers, the people sleeping rough. Jeremiah says, “Pray for the city, for in its welfare you will find yours.”

Plant something… A real garden, a balcony pot, a community garden… or maybe plant kindness, hope, or encouragement. I remember someone (maybe one of you?) once said, “I plant pansies every year because they make me happy, and anyone walking by gets a little joy too.” That’s holy work.

Support goodness in your neighbourhood… Buy from a local farmer, donate to the food bank, or volunteer your time in a way that fits your capacity. So many of you do this already… our Thrift Shop would not be so successful if it wasn’t for so many of you and others in the community who volunteer so much of your time. Even writing cards to shut-ins, or making phone calls to people who are lonely, helps the welfare of the community.

Stay curious… The exiles were told to learn about Babylon – to engage, not withdraw. So too for us. Learn something new about Indigenous peoples in our area. Listen to someone with a different story. It keeps our hearts supple and grateful.
And perhaps most importantly, practice seeing beauty where you are.

Even if life isn’t what it used to be, even if your world has grown smaller, even in very difficult times, there are still blessings right here and beauty that we can notice.
The sound of geese flying overhead. The taste of your favourite Thanksgiving pie.
The laughter that bubbles up even when we least expect it.

One of the lovely things about being human is our ability to find humour even in exile.
I imagine some of those Israelites in Babylon saying, “Well, Jeremiah, I did what you said – I built a house, planted a garden, but now I’m out of breath and my back hurts.

What’s next?”

And Jeremiah might have said, “Rest. Eat what you’ve grown. And remember who gave you the strength to plant it.”
Gratitude doesn’t erase hardship – but it keeps hardship from erasing us.
There’s an old saying that gratitude turns what we have into enough.
And when we practice gratitude, even in the unfamiliar, something miraculous happens:

The foreign place begins to feel like home. The bitter becomes a little sweeter. And we begin to glimpse God’s quiet work in all things.
Jeremiah’s message was not just for a people long ago – it’s for us today. We too are sometimes living in a strange land – a world that changes faster than we can keep up.

But the call remains the same:
Build. Plant. Pray.

Seek the good of the place where you are. For in its welfare, you will find your welfare.
A few years ago, I visited a woman in her 80s from one of my former congregations.
She’d recently moved from her longtime home into a seniors’ residence.
When I asked how she was adjusting, she said, “Well, I was pretty grumpy about it at first. The walls are beige, the meals come on a schedule, and my garden’s now a pot of petunias on the balcony.”

Then she paused and smiled.

“But you know, after a few weeks, I decided I might as well treat this place like a special project. So I started bringing flowers down to the dining room. I learned everyone’s names. I started a jigsaw puzzle club. And when the new folks move in, I tell them, ‘Welcome to Babylon – but the food’s not bad!’”

We laughed, but she meant it. She’d learned to seek the welfare of the place where she was – to bloom right where she’d been planted. And wouldn’t you know, by the time she finished her story, I realized she had more joy, more gratitude, and more community than many people half her age. Her little acts of care transformed that residence into a place of belonging – for her, and for everyone else.

That’s the miracle Jeremiah was pointing to all those centuries ago: when we seek the good of the place we’re in, gratitude takes root, and the world becomes a bit more like home.

So this Thanksgiving, as we count our blessings, may we also become blessings –
for our neighbours, our community, our planet, and for the world God loves.

And may we find, even in the midst of change, that gratitude is the surest way home.