At the end of Jeremiah, after all the destruction, King Evil-merodach of Babylon releases Jehoiachin from prison and treats him kindly. He's fed daily for the rest of his life. It's a small grace at the end of a broken book.
This verse is almost easy to miss. The book of Jeremiah has been unrelenting in its prophecies of judgment and doom. Then this tiny moment of kindness breaks through. A prisoner is released. A captive is fed. Someone remembers his humanity.
I think about how grace often arrives as small gestures in the midst of systemic failure. A captor who actually sees a prisoner. Food when you thought there'd be nothing. Freedom you didn't think would come. The verse doesn't pretend everything's fixed. The exile still happened. The city was still destroyed. But mercy enters even there. That's what keeps me human. That's what saves.
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