God’s plans extend beyond what we can imagine, realize, or hope for. In this sense, trying to understand God’s way in the world feels like a mystery, even an impossibility. Yet embracing God’s plans is what it means to have faith in God’s transformation of our world. We face an impossible task, made possible in Christ. Even when faithful actions seem senseless by the world’s standards, we are still called to put our trust in God.

The prophet Jeremiah also calls for a higher vision. Rather than rebuilding only their own nation, Israel is urged to reach out to their neighbors and seek peace and welfare with those who were not God’s people.

This issue of the NCM Magazine highlights Christians who embody this vision in situations of fear, war, and desperation. Their stories do not feature saints set apart from the rest of us, but ordinary people scattered across the globe who bring light into difficult places. Here we see the church as it is called to be—people whose faith in Jesus ushers them into a new way of living. Walter Brueggemann writes that embracing God’s vision makes us “children of the eighth day”—followers of Jesus who choose a radical, alternative way of life.

Too often, fear and scarcity tempt us to shrink God’s vision and live small. God calls us not to be paralyzed, but to live by a different rule. The stories in these pages remind us that even in fearful times, the church learns to serve and love. When resources are scarce, believers gather to share with neighbors. In Armenia, Cameroon, DR Congo, Italy, Iraq, Mongolia, Myanmar, and Ukraine, Christians make space for others even in the midst of war because Jesus asks it of them. They may be afraid, but they are not prisoners to fear. They keep serving, confident in God’s abundant love and care.

The use of “peace and welfare” in Jeremiah 29 is no accident. This peace—shalom—is fullness of life in God’s vision for the world. Jeremiah’s words are not a promise to keep God’s people safe, but an invitation into God’s renewing work. Living into this vision requires faith, because it stretches beyond our present circumstances. The church is called to embody God’s reign, an alternative to the kingdoms, powers, and principalities of this world—an alternative to fear, despair, poverty, selfishness, and loneliness.

Brueggemann writes:

“Shalom is rooted in a theology of hope, in the powerful, buoyant conviction that the world can and will be transformed and renewed, that life can and will be changed and newness can and will come.”

This vision takes shape every week as congregations around the world pause in thankfulness at the Lord’s Supper. We are formed as the Body of Christ through Word and table. The way of Jesus resists the logic of this world: we forgive and seek reconciliation, we help those who don’t “deserve” it, we visit the imprisoned, we feed the hungry (Luke 4:16–21). We join God’s new creation, where wolves and lambs lie down together (Isaiah 11:6) and swords become plowshares (Isaiah 2:4).

These are God’s plans for us: a new reality under Christ’s lordship. Lord, give us eyes to see and faith to live into “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

Taken from the latest issue of NCM Magazine. Read the rest of the issue here.