Living in Two Times
A Reflection on Exile and Prayer
One of the great challenges of being human is that we live in two times at once. On the one hand, we live in the immediacy of the present moment. The present is unavoidable—every day bringing with it a basket of anxieties and uncertainties. We wake up to headlines about political violence, the degeneration of norms we thought were settled, the dizzying pace of technological change, and the creeping rise of authoritarianism in our common life. The questions that come from living in this present time are heavy ones: How will this spiral of violence and division change our country? What role will artificial intelligence play in reshaping our economy and our relationship to work? What does it mean for our democracy when ideas long thought defeated now march confidently back into the public square?
These are questions of immediacy. They point to disruption. They breed fear.
But Christians also live in another time: God’s time. God’s time is not marked by polling data, technological innovation, or the daily churn of the news cycle. God’s time is measured in mercy, providence, and redemption. The arc of history is not bent by our anxieties, but by the will and purposes of God.
This week I’ve been meditating on Jeremiah 29, a chapter most of us know by one famous verse. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). That is surely good news—unless you read the rest of the chapter around it. Too often when we plaster verse 11 on keychains or wall art, we present it as a kind of guarantee that God is all about our health, wealth, and well-being. But that single verse sits in the middle of a very harsh reality.
God, through the prophet Jeremiah, is speaking to a people in exile. They had been carried away to Babylon, stripped from their homeland, placed under the control of a foreign power. In verse 5, just a few lines before the verse we love to quote, God tells them to settle in for the long haul: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters… multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jeremiah 29:5–6). God is essentially saying: you are going to be here for quite some time. Don’t put your life on pause waiting for quick deliverance. Build. Plant. Live. Seek the welfare of the city where you’ve been sent—even though it is not the place you long to be (Jeremiah 29:7).
One does not build houses or plant gardens without expecting to remain long enough to see them bear fruit. God was telling the exiles: the immediacy of your suffering will not vanish overnight, but in the arc of history, my redemption will still unfold. And then just after the quotable verse 11, the text continues with instructions about how to live in God’s time: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:12–13).
That’s the invitation. Not quick fixes. Not a promise of ease. But the promise that if we remain faithful—if we pray, if we keep seeking God with our whole hearts—God will hear us. God will be found.
And that is why our common worship and prayer matters so much right now.
Let me be clear: this is not about guilt or the old caricature of a rector scolding or cajoling the parish to get to church on Sunday to drive up our attendance data. It’s about how we must live through this age of disruption— by turning to God’s time in the midst of our own time.
When we gather together in worship, we step out of the anxious now and step into God’s time. In the Eucharist, we pierce the veil of heaven and join our voices with angels and archangels, with prophets and apostles, with generations before and generations yet to come. In the Sacraments, we are reminded that God’s kingdom is not theory—it is real, and it is breaking into the present every time we pray together, sing together, and receive Christ’s body and blood together.
I will never forget the Sunday when we returned from nineteen months apart in 2021, after the Diocese of Atlanta lifted COVID restrictions. There was a palpable sense of relief, joy, and connection among us. For some of us, it felt like we had finally come back to what we had longed for, even though the world around us had radically changed. For others, the gift was the sheer respite of being together again after profound isolation and loneliness—the Sabbath rest was our ability to gather and celebrate as the Body of Christ after a long, disorienting exile. It was wonderful to witness the way prayer, song, and sacrament drew us back not only to each other, but into God’s time!
That day was a living parable of Jeremiah 29: even in exile, God calls us to keep praying, keep worshiping, keep building houses and planting gardens, until redemption comes in full— after a year of prayer mediated through screens and cameras, we were able to touch and see one another again!
In these different but disorienting times, we cannot afford to neglect this gift. When the world shakes, our prayers hold us steady. When politics and culture press in with fear, our worship lifts our eyes to hope. When technology moves faster than our wisdom, the ancient rhythm of prayer anchors us in God’s eternal presence and providence.
So yes, we are going to have to build houses and plant gardens, both literally and metaphorically, in this age of uncertainty. We are going to have to hold fast to what is good, cling to the traditions of faith we have inherited, and trust that God’s redeeming work is still being revealed as it has for the faithful remnants of human history. And we are going to have to pray—together. We are going to have to worship—together. Not as a burdensome duty, but as an act of courage and faith, as a declaration that we trust God’s time more than the times we see flashing across our screens.
We live in two times—the anxious now, and the eternal time of God. My prayer is that we may live more fully in the second, so that we can face the first with courage, compassion, and hope.
So…. see you all Sunday at the Altar rail?
Pax et Bonum!
Fr. Ben +
