Planting Gardens in Babylon

Reflections on Jeremiah 29:4-7

Living far from home, as we do, can be a strange experience.

We know what it is like to carry a passport from one country while living in another. We understand visas, unfamiliar customs, different foods, and languages that do not always cooperate.

Sometimes life abroad is exciting. Sometimes it is exhausting. Often, it is both before lunch.

People move for work, ministry, business, education, retirement, or family. Some expect to stay briefly and are surprised by how many years have passed.

That raises an important Christian question:
How should followers of Jesus live faithfully in a country that is not their home?
Jeremiah 29 gives a wise and surprising answer.

The people of Israel had been carried into exile. Jerusalem had been broken. Their national identity had been shaken. They were living in Babylon, far from the land they loved.

Their experience was far more painful than that of most expatriates today. They had not moved by choice. They had been conquered and removed from their homeland.

Still, one part of their experience may feel familiar. They had to learn how to live faithfully in a place that was not home.

God’s instructions were unexpected.

He told them to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and settle into life.

Then He said:
“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf.”

God did not tell His people to become Babylonians. He did not tell them to forget Jerusalem. But neither did He allow them to live in Babylon while remaining emotionally absent from it.

They were to love their neighbors, contribute to the life around them, and seek the good of the place where God had put them.

The central truth is simple:

Bless the place where you live. Remember where you belong.
Plant Gardens (Seek the Good of the City).

Bless the place where you live.

The word translated “welfare” is the Hebrew word shalom. It means more than peace or the absence of conflict. It includes wholeness, well-being, justice, safety, and flourishing. It describes life becoming more like what God intended.

God told His people to seek the shalom of Babylon.
They were to care about more than their private religious lives. They were to care about families, work, justice, children, and vulnerable people. They were to ask, “What would help this place become more whole?”

That text is from the Old Testament, but it is a deeply Christian question.
What would help our neighborhoods become more whole? What would help workplaces become places of honesty and dignity? What would help churches proclaim Christ clearly and serve their neighbors humbly?

Seeking the good requires more than noticing what is wrong.
Complaining is easy. Comparison is easy.

We expats can become skilled at explaining how everything would work better if others simply did things the way they were done back home.
Sometimes their observations may even be correct.

But constant criticism is much too easy. And it does not require much love.

Seeking the good is the harder path. It calls us to listen before judging, to learn before correcting, and to serve wherever we find ourselves.

One danger of expatriate life is that people can live in a country without truly living among its people. They may interact with local people mainly as drivers, cleaners, employees, landlords, translators, students, or customers.
But people are more than the roles they perform.

They are neighbors.

They have families, histories, hopes, disappointments, gifts, and burdens. They bear the image of God.

People become neighbors when they become visible.

For an employer, “planting a garden” may mean paying fairly and keeping promises. For a teacher, it may mean caring about students as people. For a businessperson, it may mean refusing to engage in convenient dishonesty. For a family, it may mean speaking respectfully about the country that has welcomed them.

God did not tell His people to dominate Babylon. He told them to bless it.

A foreign resident is not the owner, but a guest. Yet being a guest invites us to participate, not simply to stand aside.

A good guest receives hospitality with gratitude, respects the home, and looks for ways to contribute rather than merely consume.

We do that because Jesus first came near to us.
He entered our world, took the form of a servant, and sought our peace at great cost to Himself.

We bless the place where we live because Christ first came near to bless us.

Pray for the place God has put you.

God also told the exiles to pray for Babylon.

That may have been the hardest part of His command.
It is one thing to pray for Jerusalem. It is another thing to pray for Babylon. It is one thing to pray for home. It is another thing to pray for a place that feels unfamiliar or difficult.

The New Testament gives the same instruction. Paul tells Christians to pray for all people, including rulers and those in authority.

For people living abroad, this creates a double responsibility. They should pray for the nations from which they came and for the nation in which they now live.
Prayer resists detachment.

It is difficult to despise a people when we regularly pray for their good. It is difficult to treat a country merely as a platform for our plans when we repeatedly bring its people before God.

Prayer does not require pretending everything is perfect. The prophets prayed and spoke the truth. Jesus prayed and confronted evil.

Yet prayer transforms the spirit with which we speak.
Prayer bows the knee before it opens the mouth.

Remember where you belong.

Jeremiah told the exiles to seek Babylon’s welfare, but he did not tell them Babylon was their eternal home.
They were to build, work, serve, and pray. But they still belonged to God.

Christians live with the same tension. They participate fully in the life around them, but their deepest citizenship is in heaven.

Every nation is temporary. Every government will change.

Every passport will one day expire.

The Bible’s final vision is not one nation standing above all others. It is a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before Jesus.

The future has a King, and His name is Jesus.

At the cross, Jesus dealt with sin, reconciled enemies, and created a people from every nation. Through His resurrection, He began a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

So give thanks for the country that formed you.

Give thanks for the country that now hosts you.

Learn a name. Keep a promise. Pay fairly. Listen carefully. Pray for the people around you.

And do not forget that your ultimate citizenship is in heaven.

Until every earthly passport expires, bless the place where you live.

The passport in your hand tells you where you came from.
The cross tells you who you are and to whom you belong.