I think, like many Christians, I’ve had a conflicted relationship with this passage. It’s a fridge magnet passage, which can be rolled out in a trite way whenever something bad happens. On the other hand, I have it tattooed on my right arm, so I clearly think it has some importance!

Like many bits of scripture, this passage has become more meaningful to me the longer I’ve spent with it. It’s a reassuring and popular passage because it tells us, at a surface level, that God has plans for us that are good. That truth feels like such a contrast to what we see in the world around us. However, by looking at the world around us, we land on one of the key objections to the passage: how can we say that God has good plans for us when the world is in the state it is? In my thinking, I’ve landed on two big ideas that change this passage for me.

The first is that the ‘you’ is plural. It’s a proclamation of goodness to God’s people, not a promise of prosperity to one person. The shift to the collective encourages us to move our perspective back a step and look at the scripture around this passage. This leads us to the second shift: we notice that God’s declaration of a good future is given to the Jews while they are in exile, being held as political prisoners in a distant land.

These two things, for me, make the truth at the heart of this passage more profound. God’s future plan for His children is good, and that goodness is beyond our imagination, but we can find it in His Kingdom. If our ancestors in faith can keep hold of that truth when held prisoner in a foreign land, then I can do the same when faced with troubles in my life and in the wider world.

For many people, the world feels like a dangerous, scary and painful place. Hope is in short supply, and it feels like this relentlessly (if you want to find some further reflections on this, then Faith Questions Session 4 would be worth a look). When we are thinking about sharing faith with others, maybe starting with our hope and reassurance, with peace and wholeness found in God, is a more powerful thing than we often think. It’s this reassurance that Jeremiah 29:11 points to. If we can learn to talk about it sensitively, it can be a great way to bring hope and love to those around us.

‘I haven’t worked for Church Army for very long, but the main thing that attracted me to this charity is that while striving to serve those most in need in practical ways, Church Army does not shrink back from proclaiming the good news of Jesus.   Evangelism is at the heart of who we are.  And rightly so.  

We live in a time when need is all around us, and increasing daily as the financial crisis deepens.  Church Army serves, amongst others, those who are homeless, lonely or impoverished, and it would be easy to feel overwhelmed by these practical needs.

But Isaiah wrote this passage to a then future Israel which would be experiencing terrible hardship: exiled under the Babylonian empire, they were kingless, homeless and had lost everything.   Yet the feet of those who brought them news that their God had not forgotten them and would soon free them from their captivity, and give them peace, were beautiful. 

In my experience feet are not often beautiful things, but the Bible describes the feet of those who bring the good news of Jesus’ salvation as ‘fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace’.  Peace: a quality which in a world of turmoil, is indeed beautiful. Who doesn’t want the promise of peace, of goodness, of salvation, a reminder that God reigns and can reign in their life?  

Serving the poor in practical ways is a powerful demonstration of God’s love, but the greatest gift we can give is the news of Jesus’ salvation.  Let’s pray as we go into Autumn, that all our evangelists and partners, and indeed all of us, are bold in proclaiming the good news to those we meet.’