Hope Unswervingly

Read Isaiah 40:31 Over the plane’s loudspeaker we heard the pilot. “We have reached our cruising altitude. Our ETA is 11:30, about 25 minutes ahead of schedule due to a strong tailwind. Sit back and enjoy the flight.” What weary traveler doesn’t like to hear news like that?

Read 2 Peter 3:8-9 The aroma from the kitchen tantalizes your senses and makes your stomach begin to growl. You look at your watch, wondering how soon you’ll be able to taste whatever it is that is baking in the oven. Finally, you hear the sound of the timer going off, signaling that the waiting is over.

Read Ecclesiastes 11:3-5 A farm has been my home nearly all of my life. I grew up on a hog farm, then later married a dairy farmer. (I also had to go from being an aficionado of the green tractor to favoring the red, but that’s another story.) I’ve been surrounded by fields of soy beans, corn, oats, alfalfa, sugar beets, sweet corn, and peas. My father was a farmer; my father-in-law was a farmer. My brother, nephew, and husband are farmers, not to mention many of our friends. None of this makes me an expert on farming; but perhaps it’s safe to say I know a thing or two about farmers. Forced patience. That’s the phrase that describes it best. Not every farmer is patient by nature, but nature forces a type of patience on the farmer, and it becomes a part of how they must live. They have no choice in the matter. Planting, rains, growth, ripening, and harvest cannot be rushed and will come when it’s time, not when it’s convenient. If a farmer has his planter ready to go in Februa...

Read Genesis 13:14-17; 15:5-7; 17:4-8; 18:10  I am in a waiting period in my life. At the beginning of it, I tried everything I could think of. I had a self-imposed timeline of one month to “fix it” or I was sure I would no longer have any control over the outcome. My actions were frantic. My words were often angry. My prayers were desperate and pleading. When the month had passed, I was no closer to my desired outcome than I had been at the beginning, but my prayers had been heard. God spoke to me like a little girl winding down from a tantrum, “OK, are you calm enough to listen now? I have some things I want to say but you’ve been making such a fuss, you couldn’t hear them.” When I gave up the human effort, I felt clear direction from God as to what I was supposed to do with this time. As months passed, though, I have gone through periods of discouragement, wondering how long the wait will be and what outcome God has in mind. Each time I have gotten to this point, God...

Read Psalm 37:23-24 “I don’t know what to do!” My sister and I would start to make this comment during summer vacation from school as soon as the initial novelty of “free time” wore off. My mother would often list off some ideas – some fun, and some work – and we would consider whether each idea was the one we would choose. Eventually, if she didn’t say something we wanted to do, we would decide to go figure it out ourselves - much to Mom’s pleasure, I’m sure. We can easily get caught up in figuring out God’s specific instructions to us in a particular situation. We ask, “What should I do, Lord?” But when we don’t hear a specific answer, this can paralyze us. I don’t know what to do so I won’t do anything yet.   Satan can put thoughts in our head like these: ·          God doesn’t care about me or He would answer. ·          There must be something wrong with me that I can’t hear from Go...

Read Lamentations 3:22-26 At a family gathering, 3-year-old cousin Ben invited my husband to play hide-and-seek. “You find me. I’ll hide,” he said. Ben promptly covered his own eyes and plopped down on the deck right in front of everybody and announced, “I’m hiding!” Jim played along, searching all over the area and even lifting Ben up to look underneath him and see if he was hiding there!   Our job involves continuing to seek God with all of our hearts – even when it hurts, when things don’t make sense, or when we can’t possibly see a positive outcome. God hides in plain sight, making it easy for us to find Him if we will just make the effort. When we do, he promises to listen, to be found, to gather and to restore us. It is not likely that we go through this process of seeking God just once in our waiting. For me, it has been a cycle of actively seeking, followed by times of resting in His peace and feeling His strength. Then I begin to feel discouragement and anxiety...

Read James 5:7-11 While you are learning to be patient for God’s plan to unfold, it is also helpful to remember that when God is perceived to be SILENT, it does not mean he is IDLE. Any parent or small children knows the feeling – that moment when we realize that the kids playing in the next room have been awfully quiet for quite a while. When my nephew was little, my sister (his mother) had a moment like that. While she was working in the kitchen, the kids had been out of sight in another room for quite a while and she heard no fighting or typical kid noises. Gradually she began to realize how long they had been quiet, and decided to go check on them. Not wanting to interrupt the quiet play, she peered around the corner into the room. Before her lay a winter wonderland of bean bag chair stuffing, being pushed, scooped, and driven through by a variety of toy machines. Silent most definitely did NOT mean idle. Imagine yourself as that parent who realizes things are amazi...

Read 2 Chronicles 20:5-12 When our son was a toddler, I was home with him almost full time. We spent our days together – days filled with reading books, doing chores, making food, disciplining, being creative, playing outside, and taking naps. He was an independent introvert, so he did not need me at his side all the time. I had a habit, though, of always letting him know if I was going to leave the room. “Be right back,” I’d say, as I went around the corner to empty the laundry basket, or whatever else needed to be done. I wasn’t sure it ever made a difference to him until one day, when he was old enough to begin stringing words together. He got up from what he was playing with, looked at me directly, and said, “Be right back” (using the same inflection and gesture I always did!) as he went into his room to retrieve another toy to add to his farm on the living room carpet. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized the impact of that small phrase. Although he never reacted ...

Read Habakkuk 2:1-3 Panic. That’s the only word for it. My husband and I were planning a trip for our 30 th anniversary. The month before we were to go, we got out our passports. That’s when I noticed. Mine was expired! I couldn’t believe it! We were leaving in less than three weeks. Had I completely ruined our vacation plans? Was there anything at all that could be done? With much prayer and hyperventilation, I called the toll free number I found and God connected me with this sweet, soft-spoken, southern gentleman named Bob who helped me begin to breathe again. He assured me that there was a solution, and explained the steps I needed to take. I was ready to take action. Except - the timing wasn’t right. It was too late to use the expedited service by mail. And, in order to use the emergency method, I had to have travel scheduled within the next two weeks. It was Monday night, and he told me I had to WAIT until Sunday to make the appointment for rush service, so that I wou...

Read 2 Peter 1:5-7; James 1:2-4 I heard a discussion recently that centered on perseverance. Everyone there agreed - perseverance is a very good thing and is very important when times get rough. It will help see you through to the outcome you desire. Then someone added a caveat. She said that there comes a time when you may see that the outcome is not going to be what you wanted, so then it’s time to let go of perseverance. The trick, most agreed, was knowing when this was the case. Something in this didn’t sit right with me. As I looked around at all the nodding heads, I found myself asking out loud, “I wonder, is there value in perseverance even when the outcome is not what you had imagined?” Because of the setting, it was left hanging as a rhetorical question, but I have been reflecting on it ever since. If perseverance is only desirable if we can hope for a particular outcome, we are putting our hope in the outcome, and not in God or His word. We are settling for a huma...