Your Best Days Are Ahead of You
Have you ever feared that your best days were behind you?
Many of us experience moments where that very fear creeps in, particularly in hard seasons that show no signs of relief. It was such a season that God’s people faced in the days of Jeremiah the prophet.
Jeremiah lived during a turbulent time for God’s people. Behind them were glorious days: days when they had been ruled over by King David who was “a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), who established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and to whom God had promised an unending line of kings. After David came his son Solomon, who built a glorious temple for God in Jerusalem and under whose reign the Israelites prospered (1 Kings 4:25).
But by the time we get to Jeremiah, these glorious days are long gone. After Solomon died, Israel split into a northern and a southern kingdom, and both kingdoms turned from God. The northern kingdom has been destroyed. And the southern kingdom of Judah, along with its capital city of Jerusalem, is on the brink of a similar fate. Whereas Jerusalem had once been a glorious city, now God has hidden His face from it (Jeremiah 33:5). Whereas Jerusalem had once been filled with the noise of worship and joy, it is now a desolate place (verses 10 and 12).
Glory has been diminished. Joy has been silenced. Jerusalem’s best days are behind it.
Or so it seemed.
Though the book of Jeremiah is an intense book that does not shy away from Judah’s sins and the judgments those sins warrant, it is also filled with hope for the future. Though God calls Jerusalem a “desolate place” (verse 12), He says it will again be filled with the sounds of “joy and gladness,” with the shouts of God’s people crying out, “the Lord is good; his faithful love endures forever” (verse 11). And though God has hidden His face from His people, He will bring healing to them, and they will “experience the abundance of true peace” (verse 6).
And key to this glorious future is the arrival of a King from David’s line—Jesus—who as “a Righteous Branch…from David’s line” will “do what is just and right in the land” (Jeremiah 33:15 NIV). Under His reign, God’s people will flourish and experience security (verse 16). God will not abandon them. Rather, He will keep His promise to David and give to them a righteous King.
Thus, in one of the darkest moments of Israel’s history, when the sounds of joy had long since faded, God reminded His people that somehow—against all appearances to the contrary—their best days were not behind them but ahead of them.
In our own day, we share some similarities and dissimilarities with the people in Jeremiah’s time. Unlike them, we live on the other side of Jesus’s arrival. The promised King has arrived, and Jesus currently sits enthroned at the right hand of God (Acts 2:32–35, Psalm 110:1). But similar to the people in Jeremiah’s day, we are waiting for Jesus to come—not for the first time, but for the second. We long for His return at the end of history to put an end to death, grief, crying, and pain (Revelation 21:4). Until that day comes, we often pass through dark days. Days where joy is but a distant memory. Days that feel desolate and where laughter has long since been silenced.
Yet because of Jesus, who is currently enthroned in heaven and who will one day return, we too have the assurance that the best is yet to come.
When we look back on our past, we will often see highs and lows, peaks and valleys. We’ll see “glory days” of a long past time in our lives that we might give anything to go back to. But what we will never see when we look back is our best days, because as Christians, our best days are ahead of us. Our best days aren’t behind us that might grieve them, but ahead of us that we might joyfully anticipate them. Our King is coming, and so until that day comes, let us cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).
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