For One For All: reading Jeremiah 29:11 in exile

• Is Jeremiah 29:11 a promise for one person, for one people, or for everybody?

Mike kicks off For One For All and Gabe reads Jeremiah 29:11 from the NASB 1977: "For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope." Ben frames the game: is the verse for one person, one people, or everybody? Boova, who texted Mike after reading Jeremiah 29 that morning, gives the exile context: God speaks to Israelites in Babylon promising return after seventy years, and warns against treating God as a genie for business ventures. Dan offers the T-shirt mental exercise: if Stephen bought a Jeremiah 29:11 shirt in Jerusalem and was stoned that day, would he feel cheated? Ben argues the verse addresses a people, not individuals, paralleling the Philistines' capture of the ark in 1 Samuel 4 and God's restoration of the relationship; he and Dan land on the "loosey goosey" side against Mike, Boova, and Gabe, with Psalm 139's "knit me together in my mother's womb" as the kind of personal promise that does hold.