Thoughts God Thinks Toward Us

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

What do you think will come your way in this new year? Good things? Bad things? Some of both? The last is most likely. We aim, of course, for good things. I do not want to be sick, but healthy. So I try to take care to watch what I eat and drink, and how much. I will try to get enough exercise and enough hours of sleep. But bad things happen. God is sovereign over this too, and wise. And not all our energy expended in seeking our own welfare and that of others will be met with success in the health department, or meet whatever good goal we had in mind to achieve. We might get the latest strain of corona virus. We might get let go from work. Those we wanted to stay and worship with us might go away.

Some of us when we think about the year to come are pessimists. These think on the negative side of things. There will be clouds, they are sure. And they are just as sure there will be no silver lining. Such negative thinkers, such “Debbie Downers” might even think that all or most of God’s providences this year will be frowning providences—upon ourselves, our families, our church, this world.

Others think on the bright side. Their favorite verse is Romans 8: 28: “all things work together for good to those who love God…” Even hardships, these folks believe, are evidences of the love of God for us, to draw us closer to him.

Those last thinkers, are, of course, more on track, more in line with how we all are to think with regards to the coming year, 2024. How we are to think is more than optimism, more than the fruit of a Pollyanna disposition. For we think by faith and with hope, and influenced more by God’s word than anything else, come what may.

By faith and in hope we should be guided by the truth of the prophet Jeremiah, from what we think or might think about this new year, to what God thinks. That is the comforting word of

Jeremiah 29:11, the word that God has thoughts towards us. The word reveals God himself thinking to give us peace, and, even in hardships, not to intend our evil. The word that God himself thinks in order to give us a future and a hope.

Think of that! God’s thoughts to us are of peace and not evil, and of the brightest future and greatest thing we could hope for! For peace is peace with God. Peace is the peace of Jesus Christ. God’s thoughts of peace are his purposes, intentions, and resolves (if we may so say) that we who are loved of God will always know his love and, ultimately, be taken to glory.

God’s thoughts. Not just “of” us, but toward us, directed towards us, aimed at us, and reaching their goal. Peace, God’s peace thought our way, decreed, and articulated into existence and for the actual blessing of the great shalom, the great reconciliation of God and sinners.

God thinks towards us. And he gives expression to his thoughts in his word. This word is now spoken in flesh, made flesh to dwell among us and to save us in sin and error pining.

The thought become a word, become a deed, is now our life and our love.

As it was in the beginning, then in time’s fulness,

Is now and in 2024 shall be.

Our future and our hope this year.

And world without end. Amen. Amen.

Blessed new year, dearly beloved. You are in all our Lord’s thoughts. Every day that you might know his peace.

-Pastor Dick