I didn’t intend to take a 9 day break from this space. It just sort of… happened. I recently had cause to repeat a line of truth found, in all places, in a John Lennon song: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” And oh, it’s true. It’s so very, very true.
Life has happened, hasn’t it? The last nine days have found all of us, again, at something of an emotional crossroads—or perhaps, standstill. Pushing back the creep of politics in our daily lives has seemed nearly impossible for the past year, and this week has been no different. The toxic fingers of anger and frustration and name calling want to pry open the doors we have so carefully shut in the hopes of making our homes safe spaces. Places where these things are discussed, but given context. Places where voices are heard, but balanced with the Gospel. Places where people feel hope, not fear.
Do you feel hope this morning?
If you don’t, look around. It’s there. Hope.
It’s in your children studying birds at the feeder. It’s in the cup of coffee that’s still hot, even though you forgot it twenty minutes ago as you went to load the washer. It’s in reading lessons and math problems.
It’s in your husband not leaving the house without kissing you goodbye. It’s in the text your daughter sent you asking how to make that old family recipe. It’s in the empty toilet paper roll your preschooler trusts you to magically refill. It’s in the cookies you froze at Christmas time for a later special treat.
Each January, I begin a reading plan that takes me through the entire Bible in 90 Days. I am stunned anew each year at how different Scripture comes alive in new and more applicable ways as I commit to immersing myself in what literally feels like a flood of God’s word for three months. This morning, part of my reading covered Deuteronomy 7:7, where the Lord states that he did not choose the Hebrew because they were numerous, but in fact because they were not. They were the least of the peoples. The small group. Not the people making waves, not the ones with power, not the voices heard in the highest places. They were the people most likely to be forgotten, trampled, written off by history. And yet, God chose them. He set them apart. He gave them promises. He gave them hope.
I am part of an achingly small remnant of women in this country. My ministry is my home. My purpose is my husband and my children. The ragings of the world buffet me here in my space, but they are not my main concern. More pressing is the bickering siblings who need to be reminded that it is grace that we offer one another in the face of an offense, or the cup of tea I can bring to a weary husband who has been up since before dawn leading a group of believers living in a Hindu country in a study of Scripture whose context they have not yet heard. Small things. Things that will not change the world, but may just change a moment. And that moment? Well, maybe it changes the world, after all.
I have hope. Friends, I pray you have hope. I pray that no matter what comes in the next weeks or years, you cling to the hope that God has set here for our encouragement, but most of all for the hope He has set before us in eternity. Life is most certainly what happens to us while we are busy making other plans. John 14:6 tells us who the Life is. Make your pans accordingly.
Your words were missed on that 9 day break! Glad you are back 😊