God doesn't view time like we do. Not only does He live in eternity (Isaiah 57:15), He has a long-term view of His interaction with mankind. The Father and the Son decided in pre-history that the Son would die for the sins of mankind (Revelation 17:8)—a mankind that had not even been created yet. God had His prophets record history centuries or millennia before those events finally came to pass.

Similarly God can work with a nation or an individual in a long-term way. We have one such interesting story in Jeremiah 32. Jeremiah is told to buy a piece of land even though Judah was to be punished. The timeframe is 587 B.C.—the last year of King Zedekiah’s reign and the year that Babylon would take the nation of Judah captive. The Jews believed because God’s Temple was in Jerusalem that they would be protected. They believed this in spite of the repeated messages from all the long list of God’s prophets warning the nation to repent or face destruction. Instead of Judah learning from the lessons of what happened to Israel, they behaved even worse than Israel.

To give them a lesson, God tells Jeremiah to buy a piece of land (Jeremiah 32:6-7) from Hanamel, his cousin. Jeremiah did this in front of many witnesses (v.10) according to the laws (v.11) and gave copies to his servant Baruch (v.12-15) to put in a clay pot to preserve for “many days.” Why did God have Jeremiah do all of this? What is the point of buying a piece of land in a country that is soon to be overrun by a foreign nation and destroyed?

The answer is that God had also promised to restore the nation in the future. “And I will cause the captives of Judah and the captives of Israel to return, and will rebuild those places as at the first. I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned and by which they have transgressed against Me” (Jeremiah 33:7-8).

Even though God was going to punish Judah, He was already looking down through time in His long-term view to the time when Judah and Israel would be restored to be an example to the other nations—he showed Judah this by having Jeremiah invest in a piece of land. It can be easy to miss God’s long view in the midst of economic troubles, political turmoil, job or health trials, even turmoil in the Church. We must have God’s vision of the future though, or we run the risk of being distracted by the cares of this life (Luke 8:14).

God’s long view is what we read in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “…while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.  For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” God’s view of this world, of its affairs and even our lives, is a long view. He is not as concerned with our current comfort, convenience or happiness in this life as He is in His long-term desire for all of mankind to be part of His family (Hebrews 2:10). God will restore Judah and Israel at Christ’s return, and He will set all of mankind’s actions on a path that will lead to eternal life. He “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Romans 4:17).

When there are troubling times to come, we should all be willing to “invest” in God’s future as Jeremiah did.