Dwelling Faithfully Where We Are
When the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the people of Israel living in Babylonian exile, his words carried a surprising instruction: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce … seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you.” It wasn’t the message they expected. They wanted to go home. Instead, Jeremiah told them to make a life where they were, to root themselves in an unfamiliar land and trust that God’s promise was still unfolding, even there.
That invitation to “dwell faithfully” runs through all of Scripture. It is also, in many ways, the heart of every covenant relationship, especially the covenant we make with God and one another in baptism and in the life of the Church. I’ve been thinking about marriage recently, with Maire and Taylor exchanging vows this weekend. It's the same call that echoes through marriage vows: to be present, steadfast, and open to grace, even when everything changes around us.
The gospel this week tells another story of being met where we are. Ten lepers call out to Jesus from a distance, longing for mercy. All are healed as they go, but only one, a Samaritan, turns back to give thanks. In his gratitude, he discovers something more than healing; he discovers relationship. Jesus meets him, not at the edge of the village, but face to face.
There’s a kind of covenant here, a glimpse of the divine marriage between God and creation. Gratitude draws us back into the middle of that relationship. When we give thanks, we are not simply being polite; we are recognizing that love has found us where we stand.
The connection between Jeremiah’s letter and Luke’s story is subtle but important. Both remind us that faith is not about escaping our circumstances but about encountering God within them. The exiles were told to plant gardens in a foreign land; the healed man was told that his faith had made him well. Each found wholeness not by running from what was hard, but by living into it with faith and trust.
Marriage, at its best, reflects this same holy pattern. It is not built on a promise of perpetual ease, but on the patient work of presence, the kind that takes root, like a garden, in soil that isn’t always easy to tend. Over time, love grows stronger in its rootedness. It learns to give thanks not just for the good harvests, but for the seasons of waiting and weeding and beginning again.
In our life together as a congregation, this kind of covenantal faithfulness matters. We are, in a sense, “married” to one another through our baptismal promises. We build, we plant, we pray for the welfare of our community, trusting that as we do, God is at work among us. When we stay faithful to one another through seasons of change, when we give thanks even for small signs of healing and grace, we embody the steadfast love that Jeremiah and Jesus both reveal.
Perhaps this week’s readings invite us to look again at where we are planted. What gardens has God called us to tend, even if they’re not the ones we expected? What relationships might be asking for our renewed presence and gratitude?
Faith, like marriage, like exile, is rarely lived in ideal conditions. But God’s love meets us right here, right now, by calling us to live fully, thankfully, and with open hearts wherever we find ourselves.
And maybe that’s the deeper promise: that when we dwell faithfully in the life we’ve been given, we will discover that God has been dwelling faithfully with us all along.
Kevin+
