“For I know well the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe! Plans to give you a future full of hope.” (Jeremiah 29.11)

I received this verse written on the bottom of a graduation card and at the time was glad to find such a positive message when I looked it up in my bible. The future seemed a bit daunting as I prepared to go off to university and these simple words reminded me that even if I didn’t know what path to choose or how to overcome difficult times, God knew and his plan was better than anything I could come up with. I carried these words with me and they helped me recommit all my plans to the Lord. As Christ came “not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me,” I continue to look towards his example and trust in the Father’s will.

As I celebrate achievements or even more, reconcile with a lost job, I go back to the prophet Jeremiah’s words to those exiled from Jerusalem. Circumstances will arise that we had not foreseen, but that is no reason to lose hope. In my case, I have been given the gift of time away from work to study my Catholic faith and discover my talents and the ways in which God is asking me to serve the Church. From our limited perspective, the future and even the present, may not make much sense, but from God’s view, from His seat in heaven, all is as it should be.

Joan Le Morvan, who co-founded the Catholic Bible School in Chichester, remembers how the Lord spoke to her through a prophetic word and two passages from Jeremiah, which led her on an unexpected missionary journey to Japan in 1981.

I was smarting from the pain of losing my part time teaching job and had ranted and raved at the Lord for several weeks, and now I realised I needed to be in silence and prayer, reflecting on the Word of God. It was in one of these moments of silence that I found I had written, “As shadows lengthen and as the cherry blossom fades, so in the silver of the evening will I come to those who bless my name in the silence of their hearts. I would have you bring my message of encouragement in the land of the rising sun, for the son of God would truly rise upon my children of the wooden sandals. I have work for you in Tokyo. You shall drink green tea with those I send to you. Pray much, prepare your heart. I will send you when the moon is new. Keep your eyes on the Son of Man”

Immediately I wrote, “Lord Jesus, will you please give me some confirmation of this, I am such a baby” because my experience of this kind of prophecy was nil. Into my head came the biblical verse “Jeremiah 1:7-8 and 8:11”. I looked them up and I read the first with amazement, “Do not say, “I am a child”, go now to those to whom I send you and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them – for I am with you to protect you. It is the Lord who speaks.” The 8:11 word I would not understand until later.

What was I to do? I didn’t have the fare to London, never mind Tokyo. At that moment the telephone rang. I entreated the Lord to let whoever was on the phone to mention Japan so that I might really believe that He was really behind this seemingly crazy word. And the person did. John, the caller, had just put up pictures of cherry blossom in Japan in his new office and felt moved to telephone me to tell me. Space does not allow me to share all the prayer and planning in the weeks that followed but suffice to say that by the time that the cherry blossom fell in Japan the following May, I had embarked on a five week tour of Japan, sharing words of encouragement with local Christians there, drinking green tea and ministering around 1500 miles of their islands.

This was the first of many similar prophetic ministry trips over the following years, which the Lord led me on, to Chicago, Dakota, India, Russia, Alaska, Gibraltar, Corsica, Israel and Albania and eventually to the island of Iona where I now live. Through them all the Word of God truly has been a lamp for my feet and a guide to my way.

Christine Parker, who is an associate member of the Sion community, shares the insights she gained from that most popular of scripture passages: Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan women in the gospel of John.

A few years ago I checked in my usual place for the reference for the Gospel of the day and noted that it was John 4:19-25. I was immediately drawn into the passage which was in the middle of the well-known story about the Samaritan Woman at the Well. The exchange between Jesus and the woman had got meaningful; she realised that she was speaking with someone extraordinary, a prophet and a Jew. However she thought she would let him know that her race of people (Samaritans) had religious knowledge too. She said, “our fathers used to come to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?”

Jesus said to her “… you Samaritans worship without knowledge while we Jews worship with knowledge, for salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming… when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for that is the kind of worship the Father wants…”

I immediately felt enlightened by these verses. Here was Jesus clearly implying that it does matter which religion we follow; they are not all the same and we need to seek the truth and follow it. Jesus met the woman “where she was at” in her faith journey but he didn’t leave her there. He taught her that it was important to find the truth and follow it.

I then began to wonder why the Church would prescribe just a few verses from an important passage as the Gospel of the day only to find it was a misprint and it should have been a Luke reference. For me it was a happy printing error, as otherwise I would not have concentrated on these important verses so closely and I would have missed a helpful insight.

A few weeks later I shared that story on a Sion parish mission and afterwards a lady told me that it threw light on her own circumstances. Her husband was a Jehovah Witness and she was Roman Catholic, which caused argument between them at times, but she felt that at least both them were following a religion. This passage, however, made her aware that it was important not just to follow any religion but to find the Truth. The pursuit of knowledge of her own religion was going to engage her mind in future as the main versions of Christianity frequently contradict each other and they cannot all be right.