I’ve been thinking about Jeremiah 29 recently.

You know the chapter. Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles. The eleventh verse oft quoted at graduations: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

It’s verse five, however, that’s been popping into my head these days. God’s instructions to the exiles: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

I think about this verse as I’m picking Oregon Sugar Pods in my small vegetable garden in the back yard. This is the first time I’ve made a real go of growing vegetables in my yard. As such, I started small. Just one tomato plant, one pepper, some herbs, kale, and lettuce. And a whole forest of snow peas I grew from seed.

Every other morning, I walk down the back steps, bowl in hand, to replenish my supply of snow peas. I add another row of twine to hold the stalks in place. I feel immense satisfaction and pleasure at the abundance. “This,” I think, holding a pea in my hand. “I grew this.”

That satisfaction has made me think differently about Jeremiah 29. I’ve long thought of it as a corrective (which it is). Jeremiah is countering the false prophet Hananiah, who’s going around telling everybody they’ll be home by Christmas next year. “Give it a few more months,” he says, “and life will be back to normal.”

Not so, says Jeremiah. “You’re here for the long haul – seventy years, in fact – so you might as well settle into it. Build houses, have kids, grow food. Don’t bother keeping your hiking boots ready at the door. Trade them in for work boots instead.”

Jeremiah 29:4-7 is, frankly, a disappointing text. There’s nothing quick and easy about exile. No use pretending it isn’t happening.

But as I pick my snow peas, I also hear a pastoral note in Jeremiah 29. Yes, exile will be long. Babylon is not Jerusalem. All your anchors have disappeared. But that doesn’t mean you will always feel adrift.

This past year has felt like a sort of exile. Much of my life has changed, as I’ve moved away from some things and towards others. Marriage brought a new city and new community and the uncomfortable truth that I’m maybe not always as great a person as I think I am. Changing priorities and a renewed sense of call to ministry led me to set aside school and the trajectory I had been following. Meanwhile, Synodical decisions have forced me out of my spiritual home. I’ve preached in Mennonite, Presbyterian, CRC, and disaffiliated churches, wandering from one theological tradition to another, all the while wanting to be in a home that has said it can no longer be home for me.

My anchors are gone. I feel as though I’m bobbing in a small boat at sea, waiting for some horizon to come into view. I think this is what Tish Harrison Warren would call “languishing.”

In her new book, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience, Warren quotes Adam Grant, who, in a 2021 New York Times article, described “languishing” as feeling “somewhat joyless and aimless” with “a sense of stagnation and emptiness…as if you’re muddling through your days.” It’s “the void between depression and flourishing.”

Warren, helped by the Desert Mothers and Fathers, gives languishing another name: “aridity.” That place that feels dry and barren. Where God feels distant. Where you feel weary. A desert. And the desert, says Orthodox theologian John Chryssavgis, “is a necessary stage on the spiritual journey. To avoid it would be harmful. To dress it up or conceal it may be tempting; but it also proves destructive in the spiritual path.”

I have tried to avoid the desert. I’ve explored denominational affiliations I was nowhere near emotionally ready enough to entertain. I’ve applied to live on a remote island in Scotland where I could ignore it all for a while (presumably the good saints at Iona saw through my application and know that staying in the desert is often what the soul actually needs). I’ve tried to dress up the desert. I flew into my therapist’s office a few weeks ago gushing about how I was going to make the most of this season. “I’m going to learn to paint, and start work on a novel, and do all my inner work so I’m a healthier me when I finally get out of this hellscape!”

But while I can now paint a decently passable leaf, life still feels kind of…meh. Anchorless. Directionless. Out of my control.

Which is why I think God gave us gardens.

There’s no great artistry to growing vegetables. Sure, there are tips and tricks and prime conditions and all manner of things you could consider. But the basics are straightforward. Plant a seed in soil, make sure it gets sunlight, and water it regularly. Then wait. It won’t seem like much is happening. But one day, a shoot will emerge out of the soil. A few weeks later the stalk will send out tendrils to loop around the proffered twine. A few weeks after that, flowers will blossom. And one day, you’ll find a three-inch snow pea, ripe for the picking.

Just show up and do the simple things. Something will come of it.

Warren tells the story of a monk struggling with the spiritual call of the desert and the work he was tasked with. Abba Arsenius’ advice was simple: “stay in your cell.” Persist in the work, in the habits. It was, says Warren, “a call to be steadfast regardless of how you feel.” Monks later developed the idea of stabilitas cordis – stability of the heart: “the cultivation of deep spiritual rootedness and resilience” through the simple practices of faith: prayer, meditation on Scripture, worship, silence.

That monk followed Abba Arsenius’ advice. He remained in his community and attended to his daily work and prayers. “And so by God’s help he went on little by little until he had indeed become what he was meant to become.”

Planting gardens in exile reminds us that simple practices can produce fruit. That growth is happening, even if we don’t see it. That prayer and stillness can root us even when we feel buffeted by the wind. That God is making us, little by little, who we are meant to become. That new life is possible, even in the desert.

That truth is tethering me right now, as twine to a snow pea.

*All quotes from Trish Harrison Warren, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience, 2026: NY, Penguin Random House