Blessing for the Meal
Pastor Alexis Ward Owens
Jeremiah 29:4-7 (CEB)
4 The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. 7 Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.
Scripture discussion
Jeremiah’s words to those living under empire: build houses, plant gardens, seek peace and wellbeing, pray. What do you think was Jeremiah’s thought process was while writing this letter? Why were these specific topics what he chose to focus on?
Theologian Kat Armas writes, “There’s a kind of holy defiance in pressing seeds into soil, watering them with a gentle, patient hand. Caring for a thing with tenderness in a world that seeks to crush and suppress and exploit—is resistance. The kind that stays grounded, refusing to be uprooted by the violence of empire. It’s choosing to flourish right where they expect you to wither.”
“Promote welfare in the city” isn’t referring to peace that silences rebellion or glosses over suffering. This is a kind of peace that looks at the city’s wounds and stays with them, watches over them, prays for healing, while sowing something better right in its midst. How are you and the people around you promoting welfare in our community?
contemplative Song
They Tried to Bury Us
by Andy Douglas (Recorded by Sara Thomsen)
SENDING PRAYER
Creator God,
Teach us the patience of roots—
how they move without spectacle,
how they listen for water in silence,
how they braid themselves through stone
without asking permission from the mountain.
When the machinery of empire roars above us—
when it paves, extracts, names, and claims—
keep alive in us the stubbornness of green things:
the refusal to grow in straight lines,
the insistence on reaching for light anyway.
Make our resistance not only fire
but also forest—
not only uprising
but also rootedness.
Remind us that no empire has learned
how to conquer a seed completely,
that every buried thing carries a map of return.
So ground us in each other,
in bodies that remember rain,
in hands that know how to tend and be tended.
And when we are weary,
let us rest like fields in winter—
not defeated,
but gathering strength for another season of becoming.
Amen.
REMEMBER - YOU ARE A GIFT!
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