Baruch’s days were filled with words that were not easy to put down in writing. As Jeremiah’s assistant, he had to write messages about sin, rebuke and the coming destruction of Judah. Meanwhile, the nation’s situation grew increasingly dire and the future became ever harder to imagine. He continued to carry out his duties, but everything he heard and wrote gradually became a burden. Until finally he said, “Woe is me, for the Lord has added grief to my suffering! I am weary from my lamentations and I find no rest.” Baruch was not merely exhausted. He was facing the reality that the life he might have hoped for was not moving in the direction he had imagined.

In such circumstances, we not only lose certainty about the future, but we may also question the meaning of what we are going through. We often measure life by what we wish to achieve, build or produce. As long as everything goes according to plan, we rarely question that measure. However, when plans fail and the anticipated results fail to materialise, a deeper question arises: If what I hoped for does not happen, does my life still have meaning? Barukh may have been wrestling with such a dilemma when God said, “How can you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them!”

We do not know for certain what is meant by the “great things” Barukh was seeking; therefore, we need not be quick to interpret them as ambitions for position, wealth or success. What is interesting, in fact, is the way God shifts his perspective. Barukh may have been viewing life through the lens of what he wished to achieve, whilst God invites him to look beyond that measure. For the value of a life is not always determined by how great a thing one has managed to build or how far one has gone in achieving what one hoped for. Life retains its value even when plans change, work does not turn out as envisaged, or the fruits of one’s labour remain unseen.

Dear Friends of the Bible, we too may face similar struggles. We may spend so long pursuing something that, without realising it, we make it the measure of our self-worth: our work, our ministry, our achievements, our family, recognition, and so on. When none of this turns out as expected, we easily feel like failures, as though life has no meaning. Yet Jeremiah reminds us that God did not promise Baruch a life free from loss. He even said that what has been built will be torn down and what has been planted will be uprooted. What the Lord does promise is that Baruch’s life will be sustained amidst all of this. From this, we are invited to look beyond our expectations—not in the sense of receiving something greater than we hoped for, but rather in learning to see that life retains its meaning even when our hopes are not fulfilled.