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Wisdom in Times of Change

EasterNational Governance, Integrity and Stewardship of ResourcesWeek 23 · Day 3

Scripture References

Read First

Old Testament

Jeremiah 29:10-14

10 For the LORD says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word towards you, in causing you to return to this place.

11 For I know the thoughts that I think towards you,” says the LORD, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future.

12 You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

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13 You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.

14 I will be found by you,” says the LORD, “and I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places where I have driven you,” says the LORD. “I will bring you again to the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive.”

New Testament

Philippians 3:12-14

12 Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect; but I press on, that I may take hold of that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus.

13 Brothers, I don’t regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do: forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before,

14 I press on towards the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Thought for the Day

Jeremiah writes to exiles who would rather be anywhere else. He names the truth they cannot hurry: seventy years. Waiting is not a failure of faith; sometimes it is the shape of obedience. Yet he also names the deeper truth: the LORD has not lost them.

Lord, steady our hearts in seasons of change. Keep us from despair and from feverish certainty. Give those who serve the public good perseverance, humility, and a hope that can wait without going numb.

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‘You will seek me and find me,’ he promises, ‘when you seek me with all your heart.’ Hope is not a vague optimism; it is a directed longing for God himself. And Paul speaks with the same sober hope: he has not ‘arrived’, but he presses on because he has been grasped by Christ. The Christian life is not panic; it is pursuit.

Public life changes slowly and often painfully. Policies take time, institutions creak, and reforms disappoint. Scripture does not ask us to pretend everything is fine. It teaches us to live faithfully in the long middle: to keep doing the next right thing, and to keep seeking God when outcomes are unclear. Give us wisdom to endure delay without becoming hard.

Prayer Points

Respond
  • Lord, comfort those displaced by upheaval, conflict, or economic change.
  • Give perseverance to public servants working in slow, complex systems.
  • Save us from cynicism and from quick fixes that ignore the vulnerable.
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  • Teach your Church to pray patiently and to remain faithful in the long middle.
  • Renew hope where weariness has settled into the bones.
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