For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah writes this in a letter to Judeans who were just marched off to Babylon, around 597 BC. False prophets there kept promising a quick return. The letter says otherwise: build houses, plant gardens, settle in. The "plans" are real, but they unfold after seventy years, for a people who must wait.
Jeremiah, chapter 29. The words of the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke to Judah in the years before and after Jerusalem fell to Babylon.