I was listening to a sermon today about Hope.
Hope.
I think 2020 has thrown us some very huge curveballs.
The year looks nothing like many of us had imagined it to look like in January. It’s crazy to think that it’s just a few days away to the end of the year. We are in that time of reflection; that’s what the last month of the year usually is, a time of reflection.
We look through the months we’ve lived so far and we reflect on our achievements, we mark a checklist of resolutions and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done if those resolutions have been met or console ourselves and make promises to do better, in case those resolutions haven’t been met.
We say to ourselves, “Don’t worry…”
This year looks nothing like the years we’ve lived.
Our routines have changed, our working process has changed, and our lives have changed.
And in the midst of such times, I’m reminded of a song that refuses to leave my mind,
“Within my heart…
There’s a melody that was not taught…
In the darkest nights it still goes on,
It’s the anthem of my heart.
Within my heart…
There’s a treasure that cannot be bought,
When all else is faded, it will not.
It’s the presence of my God.”
I think we’ve been waddling through dark murky waters trying to lead ourselves out of something we never saw coming, a pandemic. Except we haven’t really figured out how to get out of those murky waters. We have no examples. We have no manual. We have no illustrations.
But we have held onto hope.
Because we serve a living God.
Many times, our hope is built on the existence of previous examples, previous illustration, and previous proof that it can be done. But hope does not exist alone in the heart of a child that seeks for and serves God.
It exists together with faith.
Which is the conviction of things not be seen.
At this moment, we might not know how, we might not know when, but we know whom! Our wisdom and knowledge as human beings is limited, but by the Grace of God, we were given the Holy Spirit, the one that can influence a room full of people to derive completely different individual messages from the same passage of scripture.
While we might have forgotten it or maybe even misplaced it,
May we be reminded at this very minute that through Jesus Christ, through salvation, we were given access to a bottomless reservoir of living hope.
All we have to do is continue to believe, continue to pray for each other, for our country, for the world, that God may open our eyes to the hope that already exists.
Times are tough. Things are different. And different is scary and unsettling because it’s filled with uncertainty. And in the midst of uncertainty, it’s hard to hang onto hope.
But we serve a God bigger than any circumstance.
He sees us. He hears us. He loves us. And from the beginning of time, He has always been for us, fighting for us, setting us free, redeeming us.
He sees us individually. He hears us collectively.
My prayer is that He reveal to us collectively and as individuals, what He needs us to do as we continue forward and that He may give us the Grace to lean into his eternal promises for our lives, for our work, for our families , with as much faith and patience as is required of us.
This is my way of saying, “
Do not worry, God has got us…”
Keep hanging onto hope,
_Naks.
