October 13, 2019 Jeremiah 29:1-7 Last week we had Psalm 137. A song of lament by people that have been exiled from their home land: “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion.” And this week, the people are still sitting by the waters of Babylon weeping in our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah. They are still waiting for God to change their circumstances, to bring them home out of exile in a foreign land. They are still frozen in mourning, stuck in the face of a completely uncertain future. God had set them apart as Chosen People. And now they are strangers in a strange land. God had given them the Promised Land. And now they had lost it. And so just like last week, they must have been wondering: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" When they asked God how they could possibly live like this, they had a certain kind of answer in mind. They were expecting God to come and save them -- maybe with p