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Hope carries us until the promise comes …

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“And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us” (Romans 5:5-8, KJ21).

     In the spring, the simplest of plant life are the first to exhibit expectant life as their cell structure begins to change color and grow. The mosses and the lichens began to tinge with the slightest changes in hues from dormancy to nourishment to growth. What has been, releases its hold unto what will become. Life lying dormant under the bitter and cold comes forth as the promise of life anew.

    Our living through the bitter and the cold, dormant under the force of the brutal endures as it patiently waits for the promise of living again. This is where faith gathers strength through hope for the future. What comes against faith is endured because as what faith have nourished and sustained in the past is remembered. What is remembered is the experience of the capacity of faith and hope begins to overtake the past.

    As a new season beckons to come to us, hope which has carried us, holding out the promise of something new begins to show its promise is true. The color of life goes from the lifeless to the subtle hues of life. In the simplest of ways with the tinges of color, hope shows us the promise of faith is true because life has come again.

    All of life is a gift in grace of our Heavenly Father and when hope blossoms in the spring after the harshness of pain and difficulty, we can smile with the assurance that our Precious Savior is bringing life anew as all promises will be fulfilled. Our hope rests not in false promises but in the glory of God and He is always steadfast and faithful in His love. Our hope in God is something we can always find joy in.

“Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2, KJ21).

Suggested Reading … Romans 5

 

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Not a thing you do but a place you go.

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“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10, ESV)

      Amidst the compartments of time, work, priorities, intentions, passions, humor, interests and activities that fill up our days, can we find extra time to do another thing? Amidst our collections of mementos, odd little items of paper and poems with numerous souvenirs stacked up or boxed away, how many more things will we do that will yield more assortment of the things we did, now remembered. Are we what we do? Do our lives add up to what we have done or who we are in the things we do?

      Where along the journey of our days upon the earth, which will ultimately be recorded in the memories of others, do we find and refine the core of who we are? It is easy to do things we love that are of little substance and easy to get caught up in the swirl of activities running the spectrum between work and relationships. It also difficult to refrain from doing things we feel are obligations and commitments.
In this busyness of doing, we add more and more doing. Even in our faith, we can have a tendency to make this vital basis for our living, a thing we do. Faith, which we may claim as central to our living thus joins the countless other items on the shelves bending with the weight of all the things we do and call our living.

       God calls us to relationship. It is a redeemed relationship. He is not thing we do among all the other things we do. He is Father we go to for all peace, need, comfort and grace. A Living Son who walks alongside of us in all of our days with hope, redemption and restoration and a constant, consistent and empowering Counselor for every moment along the way. He dwells from a place of love as we go Him in prayer. He waits from a place of grace we carve out when we are still before Him and desire His will. He gives from a place of benevolence when we come to Him in need. He heals from a place of mighty strength as we trust and obey. He teaches from a place of truth when we go to Him for wisdom.

       Our faith is not a thing we do but a place we go to find, wait and dwell in our Heavenly Father’s love. Before Jesus Christ could ever do a single thing, He went and spent time in the presence of His Father in communing prayer and in the midst the vast demands of His ministry, He walked away to go to a place where His Father waited for Him. Before all things and in the midst of all things, our Living God and the relationship we have with Him, must be the place we go for all things.

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went to a solitary place , where he prayed” (Mark 1:35, NIV).

Suggested Reading … Mark 1